Kitten Blue

“Take a look in the box, sweetie,” he mother said, her eyes twinkling. “There’s a surprise for you!” She turned and winked at her husband, who winked back. Darcy ignored them, but turned from reassembling her dismantled doll to lean over and look inside the open top of the old Xerox paper box.

Inside the box sat a tiny, six-week old kitten with short black hair and huge blue eyes, staring up at her. Darcy stared down at him, and he stared back at her, his nose wiggling in the air as he caught her scent. Their eyes locked, and both studied the other carefully. Darcy watched him for a moment longer, then slowly looked back up at her parents, who were waiting with baited breath.

“It’s a kitty,” she said, in a flat voice lacking any hint of excitement. “You got me a kitty.” She continued to stare at her parents, whose smiles were beginning to falter. This was the part she enjoyed the most, watching them squirm internally, trying to maintain their façade. Her mother’s eyes were almost pleading with Darcy to love the kitten, to take him into her arms and cuddle him just like any other seven year old girl would. Darcy stared into those eyes, those eyes that now began to water at the edges, just above the fake smile that gradually started to tremble, ever so slightly.

“Yes, sweetheart, it’s a kitty. And look! He has black hair and blue eyes, just like you!” Darcy’s father chimed in. She turned to look at him, and saw that he was looking down at the kitten, who was yawning widely in the box. He couldn’t look at his daughter, and seemed to hope desperately that his little girl would follow his gaze downward.

She looked back down at the kitten again, his huge blue eyes looking back and forth from Darcy to her parents. He seemed unconcerned with either, but he didn’t know the little girl before him. He’d never met the neighbor’s dog, who cowered beneath the bushes when the school bus rolled up outside in the afternoons, or the kids on the bus who held their breath when the bus stopped outside in the mornings.

“He’s cute,” Darcy said at last, and the audible sigh from her parents let her know that they’d finally relaxed. She reached into the box and carefully lifted the kitten out from the box. He mewed softly as she brought him in and held him close, cuddling him against her neck and stroking his silky fur. He closed his eyes and nuzzled his head up underneath her chin, working to find a comfortable position. But Darcy’s expression didn’t change, her eyes still blank, no smile or giggle escaping her lips. She turned up to look into her parent’s eyes again. He father was relaxed, with a genuine smile on his face, but her mother was still rigid. The false smile on her face had melted from one side so that only half remained, and her eyebrows had furrowed together slightly. Darcy could almost hear the gears turning in her mother’s head, could feel the concerns she had but was too frightened to voice.

“Now, Darcy, you know that this will be a big responsibility. We want you to have a pet, and you’ve been asking for one for a while, but you need to make sure you take good care of him,” her mother stated slowly, picking each word carefully. “You have to make sure you feed him, and change his litter box, and play with him a lot, do you understand?” Darcy pulled the kitten away from herself and held him out at arms length, looking into his bright blue eyes.

“Yes, mommy. I’ll play with him a lot,” she said without even the tiniest hint of emotion in her voice. She glanced back up and her mother’s smile was almost completely gone, and her eyebrows had nearly pushed together completely just over her nose. Her father was already moving back out of the room and reaching back to pull his wife along with him.

“Well, sweetie, we’ll just leave you to play with your kitty for a bit, so you can decide on a good name for him,” Darcy’s father said as he half-dragged his wife from the room with him. As they stepped out into the hallway, they closed the door behind them, but then Darcy’s mother popped it back open just a bit, and took one last worried glance through the slit before leaving the door still slightly ajar.

Darcy returned her attention to her dismantled doll. She had been saddened that the head had only survived through four tugs, as she had expected it wouldn’t pop out until seven, and now she was having trouble trying to push it back in. As she tried to jam it back on, she watched the new kitten wander around her room aimlessly, sliding on the hardwood floor and mewing every now and again at the various stuffed animals he came across. He pounced on one, and wrestled with it for a few seconds, before pushing off it and bounding across the room, coming to a stop just a few inches from Darcy. He leaned back onto his haunches and stared up at her face, waiting expectantly.

Sighing at the uncooperative doll, Darcy placed the body parts on the floor and stared at her new kitten. Her mother had told her quite clearly that she was supposed to play with him, but Darcy wasn’t sure how she should. As she considered how to play with a little kitten, she watched as he wandered across the floor and started batting at a long, loose string hanging off of the comforter on her bed. The kitten jumped and swiped at the string, grabbing it in his teeth and trying to drag it to the ground. Darcy kept watching for a moment, before she rose up and walked to her dresser.

Bending down in front of the dresser, she squeezed her fingers into a small gap between two of the floorboards. Pulling hard, she lifted one at one end into the air and pushed it back. Darcy then leaned in close and squinted into the dark opening now in the floor before her. Grabbing the nearby flashlight hidden under the dresser, she turned the light down into the dark space.

Dozens of metal blades gleamed back at her in the limited light. Knives and scissors of all kinds lay in a jumbled heap against the ceiling of the lower level of the house. Darcy reached into her personal stash, carefully shifting the weapons around until she came to the item she was searching for, a rusty pair of jagged pruning shears. Drawing them back out carefully, she turned and stooped over to the kitten, still tussling with the long thread.

Reaching down, Darcy pulled the kitten away from the string. Bringing the shears close to the bed, she snipped the loose thread close to the edge of the comforter, then turned and let it fall to the waiting kitten, which eagerly began wrestling with the liberated string across the floor of the room. Darcy quickly returned to her hidden stash and deposited the shears, then pushed the floorboard nearly back into position, leaving it just barely popped open.

The kitten continued to wiggle and squirm, chewing the edge of the string and pulling at it with his paws. Darcy bent down and lifted the string away from him, holding it in midair. He jumped at it and snagged it with his claws, drawing her arm down towards the floor with the string firmly clenched. She let him pull it down, then quickly pulled it back away, and so they continued with the game of tug-o-war for a short while.

Before long, Darcy began to grow bored with the game. Although the kitten was cute, Darcy didn’t find that nearly as interesting as other girls did. Leaving the kitten to shred the remains of the thread, she returned to her weapon stash and pulled the board up. Reaching in again, she felt around carefully until her hand grasped the handle she sought.

Standing up slowly, she pulled a long, 9” carving knife out of the floor. She turned around and walked to the corner of the room where her stuffed animals, many covered with stitches from numerous repairs, sat in a large pile. She leaned out over the pile, the end of the carving knife held delicately between the grip of her forefinger and her thumb, with the long blade pointed down. Closing one eye, Darcy looked down at the stuffed animals and picked out a target. A stuffed puppy, one of her favourites. He had more stitches than most of the others, at least. Lining up the blade within her eyesight, she released the handle.

A direct hit! The blade ripped into the belly of the stuffed puppy and the knife tilted over, thumping lightly against the hardwood floor. A wide smile spread across Darcy’s face as she bent to retrieve the carving knife, stood and turned slowly toward the kitten, now hunkered down with his back to her. She crossed the room and leaned out over him, holding the blade carefully again with her finger and thumb, one eye open. She watched the blade swing slightly, and then focused on her target, smiling grandly. The kitten was still hunched down, playing with some little thing. She slowly allowed the blade to slip…

Then she stopped, and gripped the handle fully with her hand. She leaned down close to the kitten to see what had enthralled him so completely. Something moving…a spider! He had captured a spider, and was playing with it! Darcy got down on her knees and turned to watch the kitten.

He was batting at the spider, some large one with long legs, but it was hurt and trying to escape. Two of the legs were missing, and three others looked like they were broken. The spider tried to feebly drag itself away on the three remaining legs, but the kitten would snag it and drag it back in close, then wait for it to try to make a run for it again. Darcy tilted her head to one side, and then smirked at the blatant game of torture. She quickly returned the blade in her hand to its hiding place, and then lay down on the floor beside the kitten, propping her head up in her arms to watch this new game unfold.

Darcy’s mother pushed the door open all the way and was relieved to see her daughter smiling brightly at the kitten in the middle of the floor, playing with some little thing she couldn’t see. At last, she thought, my daughter is happy with something normal for once. She came into the room and sat on her daughter’s bed, smiling genuinely at the kitten playing so sweetly on the floor.

“So, have you decided on what name you’d like for your little kitten?”

Darcy looked up at her mother’s question, and with a big smile on her face replied quite clearly.