As you can see by my new schedule, today is a Random Writing Friday, where I post a finished work I’ve written that may or may not have anything to do with Finding Dragons.  These will be the only days I don’t always use a dragon picture for my featured image.

Today’s work is a short story I wrote a few years ago about my kids (some would call them cats or fur-kids, but they are my children, make no mistake!), from the perspective of my littlest, named Chiru.  Her picture is here at the top of the story, and another picture of all of my kids is at the bottom, showing how much they’ve grown since they were born in 2002 (the photo is from 2011).  Sadly, we lost my daughter Mara last year, so this story is a little bittersweet for me, but it’s still a favorite nonetheless.  Enjoy!

Forever Home
by Jamie Lyn Weigt

Mommy and Daddy are packing boxes again, I can’t believe it. I heard Mommy say we were finally going to our “forever home,” but I didn’t know what that meant, so I went to find Rei-momma to ask her. Mommy and Daddy just call Rei-momma by her real name Rei-chan. She’s all grey. They call me Chiru, and I’m silver and white. My crabby sister is Mara, who’s brown and black, and my lazy brother is Misu, who’s grey like Rei-momma but white on his tummy. We all go by these short names most of the time, but if we’re in trouble then Mommy yells our longer names, and even our middle names, too.

Rei-momma had Mara and Misu and me on a nice fluffy blanket, far away in a room of a tiny apartment that Mommy and our first dad shared with a big, scary dog, and the dog’s dad, but they lived in a different part of the apartment. We stayed in our one little room, but every time Mommy left or came home, we could see the slobbering monster out the door – and he could see us! He was really loud!

I don’t remember much else about that place except the dog’s scary teeth and how bad he smelled, but Rei-momma told us that’s where Mommy brought her before we were born. Rei-momma had a different home before, but she got Outside one day and got lost. Then she got pregnant with us, and says she was always scared and cold, moving from place to place in the Outside, until Mommy found her. Mommy took her to the Dog Place, took care of her, and gave her food and love, and when we came along, Mommy decided to keep all of us, too.

But Mommy moves all the time! I sometimes feel like I’m never settled. We left the Dog Place and moved to the Sink House with our first dad. I remember Mommy’s bathroom there had a little sink, which is what Mommy calls the sitting place where the water comes out sometimes. Misu used to drink the dripping water from the tap forever. We were all a lot littler back then too, so Mara and Misu and me would all sit in the sink together to watch Mommy get ready for work in the morning. I still like sitting in the bathroom with Mommy no matter where we are, but Mara and Misu only come in sometimes. I think it’s cuz I’m the only one small enough to fit in the sink anymore.

Chiru’s not looking, Mara’s laying down, and Misu’s sitting pretty.  4.5 months old.

But then our first dad went away. There was lots of shouting and crying before he left, and then it was just Mommy and Rei-momma and Mara and Misu and me in the Sink House. I think that’s when Mara got crabbier, and Misu got sad. Rei-momma was quiet for a long time; I think she was waiting for dad to come back. He’d helped her a lot on the day we were born, and she really loved him. Mommy got sad too for a while, and then we moved again. We went to a nice place not too far away, but our first dad never came back.

Then Mommy packed us up and we moved again, but this time we were in our travel boxes in the big travel box that Mommy sits in too, for a really long time. We have to go in travel boxes when we move, and also when we go to the vet. Box trips are scary because we can’t see what’s going on very well, and we can’t keep our balance like normal because it shakes a lot. Mommy puts our boxes facing each other, so I can see Rei-momma and Mara. They always ride together, because Mara gets even more crabby in the box.  Misu and I are always in the same box too, because he’s the biggest and I’m the littlest. A trip to the vet always ends with at least one of us, and usually all of us, getting poked and prodded and snipped and cathandled in some way.  I don’t like those.

I didn’t like this trip either.  We thought we were just moving like all the other times, but it took a really, really long time to get where we were going.  We got hungry and thirsty, and even Misu (who’s usually really relaxed) started to get upset. We rode forever.

When we finally stopped and got to smell the Outside, we knew something was different. We never get to go Outside because we don’t want to get lost like Rei-momma did, but we always sit in the open windows at home, and this Outside smelled different than any other. More like water, and different plants, and what Rei-momma told me were Cows. At first she was scared that we were just back where Mommy had first found her, because there were Cows there too, but then we went into another apartment, like where we were born, and Rei-momma relaxed. When we sat in the windows we were so high up we could see forever! But we never saw any actual Cows. Mommy pointed out the window and said words even Rei-momma didn’t know like “River” and “Stockyards,” but we never figured out where the Cows were.

We only lived at the Cow Home a little while before we moved again, but thankfully it didn’t take nearly as long to get to our new place this time. We had a big room all to ourselves at first, but eventually we got to see the rest of the house – and there were other cats there! Except for the big monster at the Dog Place, Mara and Misu and me had never seen any other fur-kids close up, so Mommy made sure to be with us when we met Emma and Hannah for the first few times.

They were different from us, and hadn’t been with their mom for all their lives, and Hannah was even crabbier than Mara, if you can believe it. Hannah usually left us alone, but pretty soon Emma was always trying to cuddle with us when we cuddled with Mommy on her bed. Sometimes it was okay, but sometimes Mara or Mommy chased her out.

We had Stairs for the first time there too, which are a bunch of ledges one after the other so we could get from our room to the lower rooms, and then even further to the cool, dark place where our catbox was. Lazy Misu didn’t like the stairs much at first, but I thought they were fun to run up and down.

Eventually those other cats and their mom left us in Stairs House all by ourselves again. This was right about the time we met our new Daddy, and he started coming over all the time. We liked him right away, and we could tell that Mommy liked him too. Rei-momma was happy when a little while later Mommy brought home a big white dress, because she told us that meant that Daddy was staying forever now. It meant we get shut out of Mommy’s room sometimes, but Daddy brings home yummy flowers that I like to eat (but only when Mommy isn’t looking), so it’s okay.

And now Mommy and Daddy are packing again. Rei-momma explained that a “forever home” means that we shouldn’t move again for a long time, and I think I understand it now. But really, I think Rei-momma and Mara and Misu and me are already in our forever home.

It’s just anywhere that Mommy and Daddy are.

From left to right – Misu, Chiru, Mara, and Rei-chan.

This post is copyright © Jamie Lyn Weigt.  All rights reserved.  Please do not share without credit and a direct link back to this post and my site, writingdragonsblog.com.