The Kitten Imprint

The new striped baby in our home managed to tread quickly on my heart, leaving four soft pawprints. I didn’t know my spirit and soul would be so open to her beguiling sweetness, curiosity and spunk. I didn’t know she would bring me back to my childhood, and even my lost mother, in a magical way.

This is not our Nina but it looks like her tiny, mighty self. Image from Unsplash.com.

Ifirst held a squirmy kitten when I was a young girl on Bedford Road in Dumont, New Jersey. I cradled it in my arms, promptly took my blonde Pudding, in red and white dress, out of her blue dolly stroller, and put the kitten in.

I was enthralled. I remember standing on the black tarred driveway near the garage door, near my Sis and her friend. I was happy as pie.

Sis’s cat, Patchy, gave birth in the dark basement, behind the small bar where my parents kept a black ice bucket with a gold knob on the lid and serious beer steins, a gift from my Uncle Malachy when he did a tour of service in Germany as a young man. (A basement bar was kind of a sixties/seventies thing.)

Patchy, an indoor/outdoor cat, was alone that day but for Dad, who supervised the birth. Two newborn kits emerged. I was the baby of the family, and I think they hid the death of the third from me. (Sis happened to mention it this year.)

Discussion ensued. What should we name them?