Calico Kitty

I don't have a picture of Calico Kitty, but I can see him in my mind's eye as clearly as if he were in front of me right now. He was about 8 inches long, sewn of a red cotton fabric dotted with small white polka dots about the size of a #2 pencil lead, not sharpened. He was stuffed with chopped foam rubber. His legs were out in front of him and stretched behind him, like he could fly. Kind of a U shape between his front legs that I could circle his front legs around my neck or arm in a hug. He had a sweet protruding, not a flat front face, a cat profile, tiny ears up on top of his head, much like my Highlander does, but not fluffy. All smooth, continuous red and white polka dotted cotton fabric. His eyes were a stitched design of closed kitty eyes, sleeping, because kitties love to sleep. He had a little mouth and whiskers also embroidered on his sweet face.

I cannot recall what happened to him in the long run. I know he had to have a few operations on his ears where maybe I chewed on them as a kid, or his tummy where the stuffing started coming out of the original seams. I had him maybe from birth til I was 10 or so. I know I got my first plush teddy bear when I was 10. I don't remember Calico Kitty after that...



So when I was in 5 year Kindergarten, I was really tiny. I started 5 year Kindergarten when I was still 4. I went to a progressive school that was 4K through 9th grade. All ages were on the morning pick up school bus. I thought the older kids were Grown Ups, they were so old, teenagers going on 30. hahaha Since I was so tiny, I often sat on the heater box, beside the bus driver's seat. I wore glasses and rarely talked to anybody, baby nerd. I was sooo In Love with my bus driver Butch. He was a clean cut Wake Forest College student driving part time for our school. To me he was dreamy, a cross between Superman and Wally Cleaver. Getting to sit right next to him was the most romantic thing a 5 year old could imagine. I sat next to him often as possible.


I was a sickly kid. I was only allowed to play with one toy at a time. All the rest were locked in the toy closet. I was deathly allergic to dust. So we had to keep all of the dust catchers away. I had two other kitties besides Calico Kitty. All I ever wanted in life was kittens, a pony, to be a cowboy and to marry my bus driver or my Dad. But Daddy was already married to my Mom, so I would settle for Butch.


My two other kitties that I had had since birth were probably politically incorrectly made of real rabbit fur. One was pink and one was white. I think they were Persians. They were also the tops of music boxes. Both had metal plaques underneath where they could be attached to pedestals, wound around and music would play back. I took them off the pedestals and they were my real cats. One had jewel like sapphire eyes and the other had emerald eyes. I took one outside to play one day, feed it some grass and get some fresh air. My Mom threw it in the trash. She said we had to throw away any toys that went outside and got flies on them, because it would make me sick. I cried. I wailed. I insisted no flies got on my cat. She got it out of the trash. Hmmm... I think my toy being in the trash couldn't be that sanitary either.


As I said I was a sick little kid, many things going on. But I was probably the Queen of throwing up. I had been out of school sick. I'm not sure why my Dad was the one getting us ready for school, but he told me I had to go back to school. I told him I was still sick. I was going to throw up if I went to school. He also gave me a hard boiled egg for breakfast. I wouldn't eat a hard boiled egg or any eggs on any day, a day when I was my most well. I did not want to eat a hard boiled egg after having a stomach virus. Where was my Mom? Maybe she was pregnant with my youngest sister and in bed?...

I had to go to school. I was 5, what did I know. All day at school I tried not to throw up. Kindergartners only went to school til noon or so. It had been a rainy day. I know that because I was sitting next to a girl who was in 4K, and she had on her matchy matchy raincoat and hat set, aqua with a ducks pattern, some yellow and green on it. I thought those matchy matchy outfits were so annoying then. She was sitting to the aisle side of the seat. We were on the right hand side of the school bus, mid way between the front and the back. Of course we are so small our feet don't reach the floor. There's a chromed bar on top of the back of the reddish brown vinyl seat in front of us.


I grew up in Winston-Salem NC, a very hilly town and the roads wind around. We were going up and down around and around. I had been trying not to be sick all day. I was getting nauseated looking at her too cutesy rain gear, repeating patterns of ducks wearing rain boots, rain coats and rain hats and carrying umbrellas on a unusual looking child wearing the same rain boots and rain coats and rain hat the ducks were wearing. I leaned over her and threw up in the aisle. Bleh. Well, my school bus drop off was about 1/5 of the way through the regular route and we had only let a few kids off at their stops so far. The kids who were sitting behind me, didn't want to walk past the stuff in the aisle to get to the front of the bus. I was 5. I was sick. I was afraid. And I wanted my Mommy.

The bus driver must have changed the route to get me home more quickly. I was usually dropped off at the corner, but he pulled up in front of my house, but I am thinking in the opposite direction across the street from my house, going up the hill. He picked me up and carried me off the bus across the street toward my house. My mother was shocked at seeing me. She was across the street at the neighbor's house that we had parked in front of. They lived up a big hill. She came running down their hill and he crossed the street again carrying me to her. You woulda thought I had had a traumatic injury to have been carried around. But no, he was just being my hero.

I'm not sure if I was out of school again the next day. Or which day I actually went back to school. But I wanted to give my hero, the love of my life, something because "he saved my life." And I was in love as only a 5 year old girl can be with a 20 something handsome young man. I sat on the heater box beside the driver's seat. I wordlessly ogled him. When we got to school, I waited til everybody else got off the bus, as I often did, so I wouldn't get crushed by the big kids. And I gave him my Calico Kitty, my most prized, loved possession in the world. It was all I had. Calico Kitty gave me all the love I ever had as a kid except for my parents. He was real to me. He slept with me most of the time. He comforted me. We went on all of our real and imaginary adventures together. I gave him Calico Kitty as I gave him my heart.

And then, I no longer had Calico Kitty. And I had a broken heart. I had no idea that it would hurt to give away my "pet" that I loved and that loved me. I had never parted with love before. I had this unbearable emptiness without Calico Kitty.

Not exactly like the song You're So Vain by Carly Simon, but the lyrics haunt me every now and then, "You gave away the things you loved, and one of them was me..."  It's what Calico Kitty would have been feeling. I was 5. I didn't have "clouds in my coffee." I had a broken heart. I had excruciating loneliness.  

Recently I have been through a life changing experience, having to give up a pet that I loved, for all the right reasons that I won't go into. I had to make the moral decision to do the right and ethical thing for myself and the greater good. From the time that I knew what was going to happen whether I made the decision to follow my heart or follow my moral and ethical values, I was in tumultuous, emotional pain. Every day I was giving up Calico Kitty again. Knowing that I was giving him up feels like the tide sucking out really fast and long, sucking away at my soul, ripping me apart until I break into pixels or atoms and my shredded feelings fly out in micro shards into the cosmos. But the tide of feelings does not allow for the warmth to flow back in, it only rushes out, draining you. Intellect also supplies pain, where it never eases it; heart ache and loss can not be rationalized away.

We can be adults dealing with adult decisions and issues. But when we give up a pet that we love and are loved by, we are 5, and throwing up on a school bus and giving our hearts away thinking we can get them back again if we cry hard enough.

I did cry. I cried inconsolably. I wouldn't go back to school. I was too embarrassed to ask Butch for my Calico Kitty back. My Mother made my brother ask the bus driver for my toy kitty back. He did. I got Calico Kitty back. I never gave him away again. I think I quit sitting by the bus driver. I grew up. My first broken heart, not over the bus driver, but over almost losing Calico Kitty.

I wrote this true story almost 2 years ago. I didn't publish it then, because I was writing it for myself, because I was so heart broken about having to let another kitten go and I was thinking about when I let Calico Kitty go so many years ago. I reread this story tonight for the first time. 

Every day on social media I give my condolences to those who have lost their cats and kittens. Some who have had to make the unbearably hard decision to let their pets go to end suffering. Some are older cats who have had long, wonderful lives with their families. Some are cats and kittens that have been injured, or developed illness. Some are cats or kittens that have been rescued from horrific situations and the rescues have done everything that they could, but the situations were not favorable to a life sustained. Unfortunately so many are kittens that have developed FIP, Feline infectious peritonitis. FIP was a death sentence until 2019. Now there is a new treatment GS441. But you must act quickly as soon as your Veterinarian suspects FIP. Your kitten's life depends on it. I will be writing about that in my next Blog. I am going back to writing so that I can share information to help others. 

When you lose your precious kitten, it is not the same as giving your Calico Kitty to your childhood crush bus driver. Your big brother can't go get him/her back. 

This Blog is dedicated to those kittens who should have had long and happy lives with their human companions. This Blog is dedicated to the humans who are broken hearted and crying with me right now. Rest in Peace Venus, little kitten who had to leave us so soon. I see you in the sky tonight. 

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