Saturday, January 29, 2011

Day's with Tucker

"Mommy all I want for Christmas is a little kitten", my only child says to me two weeks before Christmas.   Part of me wanted to jump in the car and take her to a pet shop and the other part was saying, "What's Dad gonna say about this"?  So I decided to go to the pet shop and then call Dad.
During the 30 minute drive my mind drifted back to when we lived in the city. Every night I listened to my daughter praying, "dear Lord please let us move to the country so I can have a kitten. Amen".   A couple weeks later an opportunity to purchase my Grandmother's Homestead came up. The property  was in need of much work, but the only thing my five year old saw was a big yard and a chance to have a pet.

We arrived at the pet store where my daughter would ordinarily gaze at every creature with excitement and have something to say about each animal. But this time was different. Her mind was on finding a kitten. We walked to the center of the store where there was one cage with two cats. One nice one and one mean one.  Our first attempt to pet "Tucker" was met with a nice bite to the hand.  "Well we'll have to talk to dad about this", I said. So I called him and told him what we were doing.  He was not happy as I expected. So we left the store, letting the owner know that we might be back.  "Mommy I want the nice one", was all that was said on the way home.  The silence was deafening.  I thought what did I get myself into.

 When we got home I had a chance to speak to my husband at length about our desire to have a cat. He reluctantly agreed to the deal if it didn't effect getting school work done.  So I called the pet shop and asked about the two cats.  The owner said we have one left.  Without thinking I said, "we'll take it!"  When we arrived at the pet shop the only question in my mind was, "is it the nice one or the mean one that was left".  It didn't take long to figure out that no one is dumb enough to pick a mean cat when there's a nice one sitting next to it.  So into a box he went and we headed home with my daughter's Christmas wish.  The cat was unusually quiet on the ride home.  I expected to hear repeated meowing during the entire trip.  We stopped twice to check if the cat was ok because he was so quiet.  He seemed happy to be in a box.  It was at this point that "Tucker" won my heart.  I figured any cat that could find contentment in an enclosed dark spot must be in need of some love.

Please leave a comment

7 comments:

Patti said...

WHAT a beautiful post! Not only do you tell stories with your art but you have an ART of telling stories....love your blog!
~~Patti~~

Deanna Wiseman said...

Thanks Patti for the encouragement. There is more "Life After Tucker" to come...

Patti said...

I am looking forward to the rest of the story. You will find that blogger is so much fun....I am glad that you decided to do this blog...have fun blogging and don't be surprised if you meet a lot of nice people in "blogland".
Patti

Happy Little Trees Studio said...

This brought back memories of when I was a kid. Very sweet!

Unknown said...

I have always had cats, lots of cats. Sometimes the mean ones are the most fun! I can't ever remember getting a cat on purpose. Our first one was "The Cat Who Came To Dinner" and he stayed 17 years. Our other cats have mostly been drop offs--the last two left by some idiot in the midst of a howling blizzard. They were very wild and fearful, but are now good pets, and adopted two of our older cats as their foster parents.

Unknown said...

This was beautiful!! I was expecting more.Thank you for your post!

Deanna Wiseman said...

More posts if you click on the Older Posts link. Thanks for visiting. Come back again.