“Want my apple?” I sat down next to her and pulled the fruit out of my pocket.
“No. Mama said not to take food from strangers.”
Admittedly I, too, was taught not to take things from strangers or go places with them, but I was pretty sure those rules only applied to grown-up strangers. Looking back, I could see how kid-me wouldn’t have been too worried about other kids…but at the same time, strangers were still strangers, regardless of age.
“Say, do you know the story of the first man and woman on Earth?” I asked, unable to bear the continued silence.
“Nope,” she answered indifferently.
I only recently learned this story myself. “They say they shared the fruit of fate.”
“In my life, there’s no such thing as fruit.”
As she spoke, she rose to her feet, pulled off the scarf, and thrust it back at me. Then she pulled her teddy bear into her arms and took off like a gust of wind, her long hair trailing behind her as she ran. As for me, I stood there, the wrapped-up scarf in one hand and the apple in the other, alone and bored once again.
The next time I came to the condo building, I snuck two chocolate treats into the pocket of my down jacket. This time I was purposely going to search for the girl.
“What are you up to?”
I found her in the basement, curled up next to the trash dump reserved for tenants. She was wearing the exact same clothes as last time, and she looked like she was freezing.
“I found a cat,” she said in a tiny voice, looking at me in alarm.
“Is it yours?” I asked, walking over to her. The girl shook her head.
She was huddled over a small box. Inside, a tiny tabby kitten shivered helplessly.
“What’s it doing here?”
“Nobody wanted it,” she replied in a scarcely audible voice.
“But it’s so cute! C’mere, kitty.” I crouched down and offered it my hand. It recoiled in fear and scurried away to the far corner of the box.
“I bet it was loved at first. But then it used up all its loveable-ness and got thrown away,” the girl explained. Startled, I looked at her face in profile…but her long hair concealed everything except her eyelashes and the tip of her nose.
“Oh, I know. Want me to go get some milk?” I asked. I was trying to help the kitten—or at least, that was my intention.
“Stop. You can’t keep it, right?”
“Well…no…” I was ashamed of myself for even thinking of such a childish, irresponsible suggestion.
“If you aren’t chosen, then you’re discarded and left to die.” She was so quiet and still, I couldn’t tell whether she was sad or not.
Unloved, discarded, left behind to die. She said she was waiting for her mother, but what did she really mean by that? Was she truly “waiting for her mother” all alone in a condo building, with only a dirty dress to her name?
“Well, it’s not dead yet,” I muttered.
Once again, she looked at me in surprise. She also seemed a tiny bit angry. But though the kitten could have evaded her detection if it really wanted to, it instead revealed itself to her. And now here it was, living and breathing right in front of us.
Using a cardboard box and some towels I found in the trash, I built a new house for the kitten out behind the building—one with a roof and everything. In place of a bed, I rolled up my scarf like a little nest. Timidly, the kitten wandered in and curled up into a little ball. Then I brought some of the milk from the office fridge on a saucer, which the girl and I presented to the kitten.
“Can it drink cow’s milk?” she asked anxiously.
“It’s gotta be really hungry,” I replied as I set the saucer in front of the box.
Together, we crouched down and peered at the kitten. Cautiously, it approached the saucer, gave it a sniff, then started lapping at the milk with its little tongue.
“It’s drinking it!”
“Let’s look after it until we can find it a new owner. I promise, I’ll ask around.”
Neither of us could keep the kitten, but I refused to abandon it. So the only option left was to find someone who could take over for us. That way it wouldn’t be cruel to prolong its life.
“Okay.”
Then, for the first time, the girl’s expression softened a tiny bit. It warmed my heart.
As we ate the chocolate treats I’d pulled from my pocket, we watched over the now-satiated kitten as it toddled back to the stripey scarf to take a nap.
“It’s so cute,” I commented. The girl nodded quietly. And as the chocolate melted on her tongue, her lips curled into a tiny smile.
From then on, I would make regular visits to the condo building to see the girl and the cat, smuggling snacks in my pockets each time. Playing with them was the highlight of my day. Neither of us knew how to handle a cat, so we couldn’t pet it much at first, but gradually it began to trust us, and eventually we were graciously allowed to run our hands down its back.
“It’s so soft.” The girl never talked much, but over time her face became more and more expressive. “Kittens are really warm, huh?”
“Hey, guess what? I brought some ribbons we can tie around its neck. Just some stuff I found at home.”
In the kitchen drawer, I discovered some old ribbons that were once used to wrap parcels, so I stuffed a few into my pocket. One of them was wine red with gold lettering, originally from a bakery box. There were also pink and blue ones from past birthday and Christmas gifts.
“They’re pretty,” the girl murmured quietly, entranced.
“Which one is the best?”
I lined them up for her to see. She didn’t answer, but her eyes were fixed on the pink ribbon—a thin and glossy one.
“Do you like pink?”
She nodded slightly.
With the pink ribbon newly tied around its neck, the kitten seemed annoyed at first, but slowly adapted to it. Then I introduced it to the canned food I bought, and before long, it would trot over to us the moment we arrived, purring up a storm.