I loved animals, especially kittens, but mom wasn't as fond of them. When I was very little someone gave us a Siamese cat because they thought their kids were allergic to it. It was a beautiful cat, well trained and gentle. Mom actually liked her, but the family discovered that it was other kinds of cats their children were allergic too, not Siamese, so they took the cat back.
After that Mom let us have other cats, but they were never the same. She soon discovered that I was also allergic to most cats. If I sat and pet a cat for awhile my eyes would get red and puffy, my throat would get scratchy, and soon I would begin to sneeze. It didn't stop me from loving cats, but it did stop us from having them in the house.
I vaguely remember having kittens in our service porch at the house on McDonald sometime before I turned six. I remember because they were under the washing machine and I thought they were stuck, but looking back I suppose they were probably hiding from me. I guess mom let us have cats because they kept away mice. There were lots of mice at our new house, too, it was way out in the country when we first built it, so Mom let us have an outside cat there, too.
Her name was Lotty. I named her after a main character on a TV show we loved to watch, "Here Come the Brides". She was a pure white cat, big and sleek, and she was a good mouser as well as a good cat. She liked us, but didn't need too much attention. We fed her, petted her occasionally, and let her run free. She always stayed close to home. I soon discovered that if I went out on the back porch and sat on the cement Lottie would come to me and sit on my lap for awhile. I'd stroke her soft fur and scratch her ears and she would purr like a buzz saw. She loved it, and so did I, until my nose started to tickle and my throat swelled up. That was very uncomfortable. I always thought it would be a good thing to do, early in the morning before breakfast. Then I could come into the house and tell Mom I was sick and I'd better not go to school. The only problem was, mornings were always busy and I never found time to just sit on the back porch.
Lottie was our cat for three or four years, and she had quite a few litters of kittens. They were always so cute, tumbling around on the back porch, chasing each other or snuggling together as they slept. Usually they were black and white, but once Lottie had a pure white kitten, just like her. I loved that little thing. Every afternoon I would come home from school and go check on the kittens, feed and water them if they needed it, then sit and hold the little white one. She had blue eyes and a little pink nose that looked like velvet but felt like soft, damp sand paper.
One day I went out on the porch to feed the kittens before school. They were tumbling around, playing under one of our bikes that had been left leaning against the wall under the kitchen window. Mom called me for something, and instead of going into the house I went to the window to see what she wanted. The bike was in the way, so I stepped up onto the foot pedal to get closer to the window and the bike slipped and fell. My sweet little white kitten was still under the bike, and it crushed her.
I was just sick. Quickly I tore the bike off the little kitten but she lay there, her stomach smashed in the middle, looking sadly at me with her poor little eyes. I knew she was dying, and it was my fault.
"Mom, mom!" I cried. "Mom, come quick!" Mom came running outside, the other kids all following her. She took one look at the little kitten and knew there was nothing we could do for her. I think Dad must have still been home, or perhaps Keith was old enough to help, but somehow they picked up the little kitten and took her off to put her out of her misery. I just stood there and cried, sick to my stomach and agonizing over what I had done to that sweet little thing.
Later Mom asked me what happened, and I told her the bike fell on the kitten. I never could bring myself to admit that it was my fault, that I had stepped on the bike and made it fall. How could I have been so stupid, so mean, so thoughtless? If only I had taken the few extra steps to walk over to the door instead of trying to talk through the window.
That was the first time in my life I wished I could rewind time for a couple of seconds and go back and change things. How many times since then have I wished for a magic wand to let me rewrite life? How many times have I felt that horrible nausea in my stomach and wanted to erase a spot in time? When I backed up into the car behind me, when I turned my head just a tiny bit and missed my first kiss, when I asked my husband what was wrong and he said he wanted a divorce? Life goes on, and you have to live through things, not rewind and avoid them, but there have been moments I sure would have liked to been able to black out.
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