by Kenneth harper Finton ©2014

Her name is Holly.

Just because her name rhymes with jolly, does not mean that she was sunny and joyful on this fateful Sunday.

Most of the day, though, she was jolly.

It was Christmas Eve and Holly was at her best in that season, but she still managed to have a terrible day.

Her plans were innocent enough. She went to church on Sunday morning as was her custom, then picked up her kitten whom she had named Missy and went to the retirement home to visit her mother. The two went down to the cafeteria for lunch, leaving the kitten to play in her mother’s room.

It began to snow heavily. Holly smiled, as she was in full holiday spirit and the fresh snow made everyone smile. “We will have a white Christmas after all,” they laughed. Missy batted at the sock hanging on the Christmas tree and they spent a pleasant hour talking and watching the antics of the kitten.

Her mother gave Holly a Christmas present wrapped in red foil paper and she picked up the kitten to head for home. She could see her breath in the cold air. She placed the kitten in the old VW Beetle that she had restored, wiped the windows and carefully began the drive home.

Aha, you say … The roads were slick and she had an accident.

No, that is not the way it was.

She needed to fill up with gas, so she pulled into the convenience store and went inside to get a soft drink and potato chips. By the time she came back to the car, the snow had covered the windows again, so she took the brush and cleared away the snow. She stepped around the gas hose to clear the back window, then walked around the Beetle as she merrily brushed away.

Aha, you say. She slipped on the ice, fell and broke her hip. That is what caused her bad day.

No, that is not the way it was either.

She stamped her feet and got back in the car and pulled slowly away from the gas pump. She had not gone more than a few feet before she heard a metallic clunk from the rear of the car. “My God,” she thought, “I forgot to take the hose out of the tank and hang it on the pump.”

Aha, you say. The gas spilled out all over the ground and caught fire from a static spark she produced when she got out of the car. The entire pump threatened to explode.

No, that is not the way it was either. It was even worse.

The station was equipped with quick release safeties where the hose meets the pump. All that had happened was that the hose had come loose and dragged beside the car. There was not a dent in the Beetle not any damage to the hose. Not a drop of gas was released.

Holly arrived safely at home, placed the car in the garage and went into the house. She remembered that her mother had given her a present, but she had not taken it out of the car. She went to the garage to retrieve it, not aware that she was being followed.

Aha, you say. There was an intruder and he attacked her in the garage. She is about to become one of the twenty-five percent of the women that are molested sometime in their lifetime.

No, that is not what happened either. It was worse than that.

What can be worse than that, you ask?

She quickly got the present, shivered and shut the car door to hurry inside. The car door would not close. She opened it up to see what was keeping it open, but nothing was visible. She shut the door again and glanced down at the floor of the garage.

The kitten lay twisted in the floor, laying in her back, twitching a bit, but still purring.

Ouch, you say. I was not ready for that.

Neither was Holly. She ran to the house to get a towel, wrapped the kitten to keep it warm, called the emergency number at the pet hospital and rushed off to get help for the kitten.

The kitten did not make it to the hospital. It died purring on the seat beside her.

That is terrible, you say.

Yes, it is.

How do you think Holly felt? Self incriminated, a murderer of kittens.

Of course, she was sad. Of course, she wrung her hands and sighed.

Was it her negligence or the kitten’s curiosity? She had to think that it was a bit of both.

Is there a bright side to any of this?

There is a legend in a faraway country that every time a kitten dies a brand new human babe is born into the world. If this legend does not exist, it probably should. At times like this we need a little help from our imaginations. We dare not totally extinguish the spark of hope.

The kitten had short, but happy time while yet it lived.

This is a positive.

The kitten will not have to bear the pain of littering nor the shock of neutering. It will not have to spend countless hours on the window sill staring out the window and wishing to chase those birds on the grass.

This is a positive.

Let us leave it at that.