for "mini_nanowrimo" hence no friends lock 16
Miko's mother had been a sleek calico indoor cat. She had belonged to a windowed elderly lady, named Eleanor. Miko's mother was named Emily and she was the kind of cat you see licking out a bowl of cream and then jumping up into a window sill to meticulously lick herself clean. Eleanor's two daughters were grown with families of their own and lived out of town. They bought Emily at the animal shelter a few weeks after their father's passing. They bought Emily and gave her to Eleanor around the time when they decided that gas was too expensive to drive to see Eleanor every other day. Despite what the offering meant, Emily was well loved and cared for. She was stroked down her back, scratched under the chin and nuzzled until she purred almost as loudly as Eleanor hummed tunelessly. She was a lap cat and she was given scraps of meat after lonely meals made for one. Eleanor was still getting used to cooking for one. She had so many leftovers she couldn't ever get to them all. Her freezer was full of plastic containers of chili, stew and homemade soups.
Emily escaped out the back door once. It was dusk in the early Spring. Eleanor was beginning to forget things. She did not shut the door when she took her bag of garbage outside and set it by the back door. She felt Emily's fur between her legs and then she was gone. Eleanor searched for her and then spent the next few hours on the phone with her daughters consoling her.
"It's like losing him all over again," she sobbed helplessly.
Eleanor spent the night in a half-consciousness in her living room rocking chair. She left the back porch light on, convinced that Emily would find her way back and she would be there when her baby came back.
Emily spent her first and only night of freedom prowling. She found an aggressive, half-siamese, tom cat and they howled fiercely and passionately in an alley two blocks from her warm home. Emily walked away with a slightly limp and a cut ear. She slept in the alleyway until a garbag truck startled her awake. She stood, back perfectly arched, and hissed before she scampered away. She meandered up the empty street until the sun began to rise a little more and the bird grew more insistent in their song. Emily made it to her back door before breakfast time.
Eleanor's daughters came to visit days later and put Emily in a crate. Eleanor and her girls took the cat to the vet. He told them there was nothing wrong with her. Eleanor wondered aloud if Emily was traumatised from her escape. He assured her that sometimes animals ran away but she was better now. Except that she was going to have kittens.
Holly was the one who started to cut out the section of the classified ads about cats and stick them to the fridge. It had been Holly who had tentatively suggested a pet would make a simple house into a home. It had been His mother who had called Him the very next day to ask if He knew anyone who wanted a kitten. She told Him about her neighbour Eleanor and explained how the indoor cat, Emily, had a beautiful litter of calico cats. She explained that some seemed to have big ears and howled a bit more than the others but they were so adorable. She told Him that she had taken the only male cat.
"Tell her to hold onto one of them for us. . .for me. For Holly. Thanks mom."
610 words. i wasn't going to write again today. i did a bunch of stuff instead of writing but, in the end, i sat down at the computer and this little idea came out. miko has always had a back story but i was never going to write it. i didn't even want to write it today. emily and eleanor were a happy surprise to me.
it snowed today. perhaps that can explain why i was so ambitious.