Houston didn’t get to experience seasons. It was pretty much summer all year round, but not the good kind of summer with popsicles and beach sand and hours of reality television. We got a hot, muggy, mosquito-ed summer, and we got it all the time. Every so often though, a fall day would greet us. This is how it was on one morning in October of 2007, when my sister, Georgia, and I woke up to an unusually crisp day.
We spent the entire morning outside on our plastic fort with our dog, Max, snuggling under blankets and pretending it was much colder than it was. We had a large pecan tree in our yard, and one of our favorite activities was breaking up the nuts to find the rare meat inside that wasn’t rotten. This morning, Georgia claimed to have found a goldmine in the small alley behind our house, where the branches of our tree had shrugged off the excess pecans.
Giddy with autumn, we laughed our way to the alley, but then stopped cold. Two tiny, gray kittens were curled in balls of fur.
Now, I am terribly allergic to cats. I am cannot-be-around-cats-for-more-than-a-minute-without-my-face-ballooning allergic. An allergist once told me I had the worst reaction to cats that she had ever seen. I require a filter in my room for the off chance that a speck of cat dandruff floated its way in. But I walked right up to those kittens and tucked them under my jacket.
“Come on,” I said to Georgia. Her mouth was agape.
“Your face will explode!”
“Will not!” I yelled. But I walked back to my house as fast as I could.
“What if they have rabies?” She hurried behind me.
She had a point—they did seem a little wild. They reeked of trash. Their coats were matted and their tiny paws were scraped. Yet, despite all of this (and my borderline dangerous allergy), I felt the urge to hold them close to me. The two kittens ignored my sneezes and took my heart, instead.
Over my father’s protests, I spent the next few hours carefully watching over them. I spooned canned tuna into small bowls and tried to tempt them with milk.
Max wagged his tail and curiously circled the kittens. He acted as a perfect gentleman, only sniffing their rears twice.
We all began to fall in love with them, but me especially. I named them Smoky and Miracle. I slept on the couch so I could be there in case they whimpered. I took so many shots of my nasal spray that I thought I was going to be dizzy.
After some time, they both started to reject all nourishment and became sick all over their cardboard-box-bed. My allergic reactions were becoming more severe, and my parents decided to take my kittens to the ASPCA. At eleven years old, I had my very first heartbreak.
Georgia and I cried for hours. We clutched Smokey and Miracle like stuffed animals, tears streaming down our faces.
“You’re not being fair!” I yelled at my father. Deep inside, though, I knew he was right to take them away. I was beginning to permanently talk an octave lower with a stubborn stuffy nose and itching became as natural as breathing.
After some coaxing and an episode of Lizzie McGuire while we snuggled with our kittens, we finally allowed my father to lay them down in the backseat of the minivan. I kissed them goodbye, taking comfort in the fact that they would at least be adopted by a nice family, hopefully one where no one had to take three pops of Benadryl before kissing them.
When my father returned, he told us that the vet at the ASPCA had a long list of people waiting to adopt kittens, and that Smoky and Miracle were going to be just fine. I missed them terribly, but I always imagined them curled up into balls of comfort and warmth, just like they were the first time I saw them.
It wasn’t until I was sixteen that my father told me they had been too sick to be adopted. Smokey and Miracle had been put down while he held their small paws.
That night, I cried over the loss of my almost kittens.
We spent the entire morning outside on our plastic fort with our dog, Max, snuggling under blankets and pretending it was much colder than it was. We had a large pecan tree in our yard, and one of our favorite activities was breaking up the nuts to find the rare meat inside that wasn’t rotten. This morning, Georgia claimed to have found a goldmine in the small alley behind our house, where the branches of our tree had shrugged off the excess pecans.
Giddy with autumn, we laughed our way to the alley, but then stopped cold. Two tiny, gray kittens were curled in balls of fur.
Now, I am terribly allergic to cats. I am cannot-be-around-cats-for-more-than-a-minute-without-my-face-ballooning allergic. An allergist once told me I had the worst reaction to cats that she had ever seen. I require a filter in my room for the off chance that a speck of cat dandruff floated its way in. But I walked right up to those kittens and tucked them under my jacket.
“Come on,” I said to Georgia. Her mouth was agape.
“Your face will explode!”
“Will not!” I yelled. But I walked back to my house as fast as I could.
“What if they have rabies?” She hurried behind me.
She had a point—they did seem a little wild. They reeked of trash. Their coats were matted and their tiny paws were scraped. Yet, despite all of this (and my borderline dangerous allergy), I felt the urge to hold them close to me. The two kittens ignored my sneezes and took my heart, instead.
Over my father’s protests, I spent the next few hours carefully watching over them. I spooned canned tuna into small bowls and tried to tempt them with milk.
Max wagged his tail and curiously circled the kittens. He acted as a perfect gentleman, only sniffing their rears twice.
We all began to fall in love with them, but me especially. I named them Smoky and Miracle. I slept on the couch so I could be there in case they whimpered. I took so many shots of my nasal spray that I thought I was going to be dizzy.
After some time, they both started to reject all nourishment and became sick all over their cardboard-box-bed. My allergic reactions were becoming more severe, and my parents decided to take my kittens to the ASPCA. At eleven years old, I had my very first heartbreak.
Georgia and I cried for hours. We clutched Smokey and Miracle like stuffed animals, tears streaming down our faces.
“You’re not being fair!” I yelled at my father. Deep inside, though, I knew he was right to take them away. I was beginning to permanently talk an octave lower with a stubborn stuffy nose and itching became as natural as breathing.
After some coaxing and an episode of Lizzie McGuire while we snuggled with our kittens, we finally allowed my father to lay them down in the backseat of the minivan. I kissed them goodbye, taking comfort in the fact that they would at least be adopted by a nice family, hopefully one where no one had to take three pops of Benadryl before kissing them.
When my father returned, he told us that the vet at the ASPCA had a long list of people waiting to adopt kittens, and that Smoky and Miracle were going to be just fine. I missed them terribly, but I always imagined them curled up into balls of comfort and warmth, just like they were the first time I saw them.
It wasn’t until I was sixteen that my father told me they had been too sick to be adopted. Smokey and Miracle had been put down while he held their small paws.
That night, I cried over the loss of my almost kittens.