It was their day off, so Timmy proposed a visit to the nearby orphans’ home. “No way am I going there,” Shiba cried. She hated the idea of being pulled down to the ground by a mob of fifty kids, having her hair pulled, and being jumped on like a common pony. Two, three, even five kids she could handle at a time, but the whole house together!
You see, because she did not hit back, or try to scare them away, the kids thought she liked playing with them, but at least Timmy should know better. But the thick-skulled oaf! He always used to leave her with the younger kids and used to go off teaching basketball to the more manageable and definitely more sensible older ones.
“No way! I’m not going there! I’m not, I’m not, I’m not!”
“I know! You do love them very much, don’t you! My good little girl!”
“Owww! The puppy face again! If I was not such a sucker for him, I’d give him a piece of my mind right now,” she thought.
And that’s how they went to the orphanage that day.
This time she tried to stick very close to Timmy. Maybe if she tried to show an interest in his game, he would not throw her to the little bandits.
Oh, this was so easy! You just had to grab the ball, and pass it to Timmy, and he would do the throwing in the hoop, etc. She was good at this. She might even be NBA or whatever material. Their team was winning. Nobody could grab the ball back from her. She was sailing with it. It was so much fun! She had stolen the ball for the last time, and was taking it to Timmy, when she heard a loud sound, very nearby.
“It’s a gunshot,” she cried, and dropped to the floor. She looked around, the morons were still standing, looking very disappointed.
“What! You are worried about your stupid game,” she shouted, “There’s gunfire here!”
Timmy was walking over to her. How can the idiot be so calm! He had a rag in his hand.
“I think you held the ball too tight, Shiba. It burst.”
After that they wouldn’t let her play with them again. “You’re just jealous,” she shouted, but Timmy took her to play with the younger ones.
The smaller kids played in the inner hall during the day. She looked through a crack in the door. They were playing with their dolls and toy cars, behaving like perfect angels. Maybe if I went in very quietly, they won’t notice me, she thought.
And then she smelt it.
It was a strong smell, of blood and cat and death. “Something’s wrong,” she told Timmy.
“What happened?”
“Follow me.”
The smell was coming from the old storehouse, where the Matron kept all kinds of old things. Wrappings the kids were in when they were left here and stuff like that. She said that someday the parents might come to fetch their babies. Shiba didn’t understand this. Wouldn’t the parents just know which baby was theirs, even without the wrapping? But she didn’t say anything. The Matron was a good woman, and if she believed anything, there must be a reason for it.
The door was opened, and there, on a heap of old clothes, was a cat. A dying cat. There were signs of a fight, bite marks and a lot of blood. And there was something else too. Trying to get some milk from her mother was a newborn kitten. There was another still-born lying nearby.
The mother must have smelt them. Her eyes flew open and she snarled. She tried to get up to fight them off, but fell down. Shiba touched the mother’s face, hoping she would be comforted. Surprisingly, she was.
“Take care of my baby,” she said, and suddenly she wasn’t breathing anymore.
She took the kitten outside. “We have to get her some milk,” she told Timmy.
“Are you going to keep it?” he asked. Men can be such idiots sometimes. Of course she was. Didn’t he hear what the mother just said? To take care of her child.
She had laid the kitten out at the door of the storehouse. Suddenly, out of nowhere, there appeared a bunch of young kids. They looked like they wanted to play with the kitten. That made her really mad. She could hear her heart beating at the speed of an express train. She stepped in front of the kitten and would have really told these selfish midgets off, but Timmy held her back.
One little girl came up and set a bowl of milk in front of the kitten. Shiba relaxed. The kitten smelt the milk, and rushed towards it, but she couldn’t drink it. She didn’t know how to. Then the kids said something to each other and a little boy brought a cotton piece. The girl dipped it into the milk and then used it to put drops of milk in the kitten’s mouth. The kids weren’t so foolish after all.
Shiba looked on for another moment, and then moved away. She felt Timmy catch up. “Yeah, it’s going to be okay. The kids will take care of her,” he said.
I know, she thought.
