Sleeping Cinnamon Roll
🦋
When my focus shifted from my memories of early years in Atlanta back to the kitten, I saw that the little thing was now lapping up the milk with a bit more grace and rhythm. Heartened by the kitty’s progress, I plumped down on the bed and picked up Hermann Hesse’s Narcissus and Goldmund from the nightstand to finish reading the last few chapters.
But I had barely read a page when I noticed the kitten had stopped eating and was looking up at me with what seemed like bored curiosity, as if to ask, Well, what now, my dear new mother? With only an hour and a half left to salvage some sleep before my alarm would go off, I cradled the small creature in my arms and settled it next to me near the pillow.
Suddenly, the kitten rose, moved its head from side to side as it curiously surveyed my bed, then laboriously ascended my large teal European pillow. After a brief moment of hesitation on top of the slippery pillow, it ever so carefully navigated its way down to my right shoulder.
From there, the little one, like a daring explorer, traversed across my upper body with its pint-sized paws. It eventually nestled on my tummy; I guess the kitten deemed the softness and warmth of my belly as an acceptable stand-in for its mother. The tiny kitty let out an enormous yawn, as if trying to consume all the oxygen in my room, then promptly drifted off to sleep.
🦋
I was somewhat taken aback by what had just transpired on my torso, but mostly, I felt sorry for the baby cat, my heart aching for the poor thing that had been cruelly torn from the warmth of its mother’s snuggle and left abandoned in the chill of the night. How terrible it must have been to be dumped outside a stranger’s doorstep, basically left to the whims of fate. Not wanting to disturb the tuckered out kitten from its slumber, I stayed perfectly still, my limbs rigid like an ancient mummy.
I also tried to accompany the kitten into the land of Nod, but sleep stubbornly eluded me, the gentle, rhythmic purring of the tiny creature atop my tummy proving nearly impossible to ignore. Finally giving up, I turned my gaze downward to sneak a peek at the sleeping kitty. It was curled up tightly, resembling a cinnamon roll, its head and ears pointed toward me, as if the orphaned kitten trusted that I could provide the same loving care and protection as its mother.
In that moment, a sensation—indescribable but deeply warm—began to rise within me, filling my heart the way groundwater gradually saturates a well. This was an emotion alien to me in my fourteen years of existence.
By now, outside the window, the new day’s first gleams were sneakily bleeding into the blackness, my part of the Earth about to be imbued with color once again. While vowing to myself that I would keep and protect this beautiful little creature, come what may, and imagining what my life would be like with my first companion animal, I gradually succumbed to sleep, oblivious of the ruckus that would ensue an hour later.