at the text below. In one shot, Rik had brought over his own e-notebook, and both kittens were studying the small keypad. Which gave me an idea—
As much as I loved the printed page, I was certainly no Luddite—I had a computer at home, and a webpage (albeit a small one) for the bookstore itself, and my web address was listed on all the major ISP’s…so, each evening, I took to carefully reading my email, studying the Subject headings, looking for a message I wasn’t even sure would ever come.…I looked for many months, long enough for the Hemingway kittens to become cats, and perhaps even parents of more “hu-line” polydactyl kittens, until it appeared. The message read:
From: <HemCats><[email protected]>
To:<Barrett and Browning>[email protected]
Subject: A Tale of Two Kitties
Hello, Book-lady,
Your wish came true. Couldn’t find _A Tale of Two Kitties_ but did read –A Tale of Two Cities _. We both like it, but it was heavy. Sorry not to have said Good-Bye last year, but there was no time. We had to avoid getting fixed. Rik says you’d understand. Look for us (Rik and Jake too) soon in all the scientific magazines, maybe the newspapers, too. The young ones are better at reading and writing than we are, and will be ready for the media soon. We tell them about the book place, what a special school it was for us, and how we practiced being parents with the wood kittens. You were a good teacher. We remember the pictures, and have looked for the originals on the net. Computers are fast and light, but books smell better. We miss the Barrett and Browning. The young ones don’t understand. They grew up on e-books. But we remember. Say hello to Oscar and April. And the shiny hard cat on the counter by the door. It never talked, but we still liked it. But not when Rik made noise on it with his rings. Rik and Jake are busy with the young ones, so we could send this. Don’t tell them we did. Just remember us. We remember you and the books.
Jay and Zelda and the young ones.
So Scooter had remembered our “conversation” about “The Tale of Two Kitties”…words I’m positive Rik never heard me utter. And Scooter—or “Jay,” as he’d dubbed himself, giving himself the name only he knew, in true T. S. Eliot style—knew that message would be the only one I’d know for certain was, indeed, from him, and him alone.
Or not so alone…if “Zelda” was Mittens. At least that caption in that Metro section had gotten it right—Hemingway-0, Fitzgerald-2.
The kittens may have been a mixture of feline and human DNA, but they were Minnesotans down to their bones.
In memory of Mittens (February, 1998 to October 8, 1998), and Scooter (February 1998 to November 22, 1998), and Little Boy (September 2000 to February 18, 2001).
“If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes 10,000 miles away.…”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
—A. R. Morlan, February 2001
AFTERWORD
As you can guess, the cats mentioned in this story were based on real pets of mine, down to the names and descriptions. The real Oscar and April died within ten days of each other—he was over eleven years old, while she was only five, but when he passed on, she literally gave up the will to live, and died of what I can only assume was a real, broken heart. Scooter and Mittens actually were littermates; they died in 1998, when I had an outbreak of Feline Infectious Peritonitis in my household of cat-children, and fourteen of them died. I was beyond heartbroken, and cannot think of that time without crying, so…I’m forced not to think too often of those beautiful babies I lost. Which robs me of their presence in my mind’s eye, which is a double loss.
But Scooter was beyond special, even though he only lived for about nine months—he was as I described him, super smart, beautiful, with many little toes on his furry paws. A part of me died when he did. I have had other cats after him, some as smart, others as beautiful, but he was unique, irreplaceable, and yet, what he gave to me while he was with me will never leave me; he was something more than a cat, something beyond words which exists only in the realm of pure feeling. His sister was sweet, timid, and also died too soon. Their loss is permanent for me.
On another note, this story was something of a lifesaver for me; I found out about it from Nancy Springer, whom I’d sold the story “That Dress!” to in 1997—she sent me a note about an anthology concerning books and bookstores in 2002, which was based in nearby Minnesota, and as luck would have it, I wrote this story, had it accepted, and received the payment (which was rather large, even for a hard-cover antho) just in time to use it to pay for repairs to my boiler. The amount virtually covered the part replacement fee plus labor. So…thanks for thinking of me, Nancy!!
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