Part 3
“Dove,” Claire said, looking up from the phone. The mother had stopped grooming to watch them. “Something peaceful. She’s had enough of everything else.”
Dana tried the name once, quietly. Claire lowered her hand beside the open pen, meaning to let the cat sniff her fingers.
Dove came forward and pushed her narrow forehead into Claire’s palm.
Claire held still. She had touched the cat before, changing bedding and helping with care, but the contact had always begun with a human hand reaching in. This time Dove stayed beneath her fingers and leaned harder when Claire stroked between her ears.
“Oh,” Claire said, and couldn’t find anything useful to add.
Dana went back to folding a towel. She gave Claire a little longer with the cat before asking her to pass the clean water bowl.
After that, the name appeared beneath every update. Dove eating. Dove resting with the gray kitten under her chin. Dove looking mildly offended while an orange son wrestled with the edge of the pink fleece.
Claire had begun to recognize the kittens by something other than color. Sunny was the first orange one into anything: a paper bag, an empty food box, a visitor’s lap. Copper preferred to watch before joining in, and sometimes managed to look dignified with his hind feet in a water dish.
Their gray sister stayed closer to Dove. Even her long, narrow muzzle and widely set ears were Dove’s in miniature. Claire named her Mist after an afternoon when she searched the pen and found the kitten asleep against her mother’s side, almost invisible in the matching fur. Awake, she copied Dove’s grooming with fierce concentration, stopping to inspect her own paw as though it had presented a difficult problem.
The coat along Dove’s backbone began to fill out. The kittens learned to eat on their own and kept gaining weight. When they were fully weaned and the veterinarian considered them old enough and ready for adoption, Dana told Claire she could start taking inquiries.
“Start taking them,” Dana repeated. “It doesn’t mean somebody gets a kitten because they asked first.”
Claire wrote the post at the folding table in the garage. People had followed the family through the clinic photographs; now they had opinions about which kitten would suit their homes. The replies came faster than she could answer them.
A woman with an older dog asked about Sunny, the little orange one who had planted himself in front of his sister in a video. Someone else wanted Copper’s photograph. There were inquiries about the gray female too.
Claire showed Dana the screen. “Look at all these.”
Dana read a few. “Good. Now we ask some questions.”
Rebecca Lewis arrived for Sunny after talking through her home and her old dog’s habits with Dana. She had been following the posts since the alley photograph and had donated toward recovery food. Still, when she stepped into the garage, she paused as if the living kitten might turn out to be different from the one she had watched on her phone.
Sunny removed the uncertainty by catching the loose edge of her scarf.
Rebecca sat on the low bench and let him worry it between his paws. “This is why I couldn’t stop watching him,” she said. She tried to free the fabric, and he followed her hand onto her lap.
Dove lifted her head. Claire watched her body become still, watched the ears turn toward the bench. Rebecca glanced at the mother, then back at Dana.
“Am I upsetting her?”
“Stay where you are a minute.”
Sunny climbed against Rebecca’s wrist, circled awkwardly, and began to purr. The sound was surprisingly large for him. Dove watched until he settled, then lowered her chin to the blanket.
They didn’t make the goodbye longer than it needed to be. Rebecca lined the carrier with a familiar cloth, tucked her scarf beside it, and checked the latch with Dana. She promised an update once they were home at her apartment overlooking the park, and another when introductions with the dog began.
Claire carried the carrier as far as the car. Through the door, Sunny was investigating the scarf again.
Three days later, Evan Brooks came for Copper. He had recently moved to the area, and he told Dana that the quiet in his apartment was starting to get to him. He said this while looking at a shelf of food, as if discussing the arrangement of the cans.
“I don’t know anything about breeds,” he added. “I liked watching this one.”
Copper sat just beyond his reach. Evan let his hand rest on his knee, palm down, and waited while the kitten inspected his shoelace. Eventually Copper climbed his pant leg, reached the opening of his jacket, and tucked himself inside, leaving only the tip of his tail showing.
Evan looked at Dana. “Well. That answers that.”
Claire laughed, and then found she had to look away. She had spent weeks hoping these visits would happen. The first one had not made the second easy.
When Evan left, the pen seemed to have expanded. Two toys lay where the kittens used to tumble together. Mist made a short circuit of the empty space, then returned to Dove and began washing the same forepaw her mother was washing.
Claire sat on the floor beside them until Dana came over with the evening bowls.
“The boys are all right,” Dana said.
“I know.”
“I still put out an extra bowl sometimes. Come on, help me with these.”
Claire stroked Dove’s side. Mist abandoned her paw and climbed into the hollow between her mother’s shoulder and neck. Within a minute, both cats were still.
“There are people asking about her,” Dana said, nodding toward the kitten.
Claire kept her hand where it was. She had read the messages too. The available homes were for kittens: young, amusing, easy to imagine on somebody’s couch. No one was arranging a visit for the adult cat with the narrow face.
“What happens to Dove?”
“She stays with me until we find someone.”
“How long?”
Dana set down the bowls. “I can’t tell you that.”
From the other end of the garage came the scrape of a litter pan being investigated. Dana glanced toward it, then back at the pen. She already had animals waiting, food to buy, appointments to keep. Keeping Dove was a real offer, and it was not an offer of a home of her own.
“I want to try for both,” Claire said.
Dana rubbed a hand over the back of her neck. “We may lose good inquiries for Mist.”
“I know.”
“She could be here longer too.”
Claire looked at the small gray head tucked against the larger one. Mist stirred when Dove shifted, followed her to the other end of the blanket, and settled again. The pen had room everywhere else.
“Let me ask,” Claire said. “Before we decide she has to leave her.”
Dana was quiet for a moment. Then she pushed the empty food tins together and nodded.
At home, Claire opened a new post and discarded her first two beginnings. She removed a sentence explaining Dove’s unusual face. The photograph would show people what she looked like; Claire needed to tell them what living with her was like.
Claire chose a photograph of the mother and daughter sitting shoulder to shoulder. Their ears tilted at slightly different angles; Mist was beginning to reach for something outside the frame. She described their routines, their recovery, and the particular way the kitten settled when her mother was close.
Then she added the condition that would narrow every reply.
They need one home. We’re looking for someone who will take them both.
To read the rest of the story – CLICK the NEXT button 👇👇👇