by Shelby Curtis |
It’s story time! For next seven months or so, I will be delighting my audience with a true-life anecdote! So without further ado, the story of Ackers.
Once upon a time…I was walking to the park with my two best friends, Nathan and Morgan. We had a jolly good time. After an hour of swinging and sliding, Morgan noted that it was getting dark and suggested we should head home. Nathan and I agreed. About halfway to our street, we noticed a family sitting out on their porch. In the front yard, a small gray and white kitten pranced about playfully. We ‘oohed’ and ‘awed’ and I rushed over to pick the kitty up. One of the people came down off of the porch, and while laughing, asked if we wanted it. We assumed he was kidding, but then he made it clear he wasn’t. We were all shocked, we didn’t really know what to say.
Obviously, these people didn’t want the cat, and we didn’t know if they would take care of it or not! So we did what any human with a heart would do, we took it. As we were walking away, their three-year-old daughter was crying and screaming for ‘Ackers’ to come back. We still don’t know what kind of name Ackers is. As we rounded the corner on my street, we started thinking about what my mom would say when we showed her ‘lil Ackers and told her the tragic story. We arrived at my front door, and bravely, we knocked. My mom opened it, stunned by the cuteness of the cat, but then she quickly recovered. All she said was “No” as she cuddled the little guy. We knew we couldn’t take the little kitten back to the mean people who dumped it, so we called everyone we knew.
Out of probably 50 people we called, there was not one person who wanted Ackers. I’m sorry to say this story doesn’t have a happy ending. After more begging, we finally got in Nathan’s truck, and drove back to the house from where we had gotten Ackers. We were glad they accepted him back, and the little girl was happy to see her kitten again, but we were sad. For almost two hours, we had a new kitten to play with, and we will never forget him. The moral of this story is, don’t take cats from strangers, it will only break your heart.
