The Painted Ponies of Partequineus and The Summer of the Kittens Read online

  He never paid for my ice cream before. That’s what boyfriends do for their girlfriends, right? So now I don’t know if that’s what we are, boyfriend and girlfriend, you know? I’m not sure if I like that idea.

  I wonder if I feel that way because Jimmy’s in a wheelchair.

  We went outside and around the little pond to where the goats and the potbellied pigs are, in cages where people can feed them corn that they get out of little vending machines. Jimmy had some trouble with his wheelchair on the loose gravel, but he wouldn’t let me help him. We crossed the bridge to see the rabbits, and then over the dam to the big peacock cage, and that was really tough going, up and down hills with roots sticking up in the middle of the path every so often, only Jimmy managed it all without my help, even though we’d have gone a lot faster if he’d have let me push him. He’s as stubborn as I am sometimes.

  On the way back we stopped at Stirling’s U-pick for our strawberries. It looked kind of tricky to me, keeping the wheelchair from squishing the plants, but Jimmy did okay. I was picking and not paying too much attention to him, and when I looked up his basket was more than half full, while mine was less than a third, and he was reaching down and picking and plopping the berries in the basket like it was some kind of a race, which I guess from his point of view it was. I tried to catch up. I never deliberately let Jimmy win at anything if I can help it, but I’ve never been able to pick strawberries faster than he can, or raspberries either. I bet nobody in the whole world can.

  We were gone a long time, and we were only halfway home when Mrs. Morris drove by and spotted us on the sidewalk. She pulled over and put her window down.

  “Your Mom called me, Hanna,” she told me. “She wants you to go home right away.”

  “Is something wrong?” I asked.

  “No. She has a surprise for you.”

  “What kind of a surprise?”

  “I’ll let her tell you herself.”

  “Can Jimmy come too?”

  “I’ll bring him over after lunch. You want a ride?”

  “No thanks,” I said. “It’ll be just as fast if I run.”

  The last thing I saw as I took off for home was Mrs. Morris getting out of their van and opening the back door so Jimmy could get in. He’s really good at getting out of the chair by himself, and it’s amazing to see him boost himself all the way up inside the van. He can even fold up the wheelchair and haul it in beside him. He’s really strong, at least his arms are.

  I got home in about two minutes flat, and Mom must have seen me coming, ’cause she met me at the door.

  I was out of breath. “Mrs. Morris says you’ve got a surprise for me,” I said.

  “Come on,” she said. “But come quietly.” She led me up the stairs and into my room. My closet door was almost closed, just like I’d left it that morning, and Mom opened it really slow, just enough so I could see inside. Maggie was lying on her side, all stretched out, only it looked like there was something attached to her belly. My clothes on the rod were blocking the light, and I pushed them aside so I could see better.

  “Holy cow!” I shouted, and Maggie sort of flinched. “Oops, sorry. How many are there?”

  “Four,” Mom told me.

  “Did you know she was gonna have kittens?”

  “I was pretty sure, only I didn’t want to tell you ahead of time in case I was wrong.”

  “Can I pick one up?”

  “That’s not a good idea. Getting born is a little bit messy, and she’s just now finished cleaning them up. It’s best if we don’t handle them until they’re a bit older.”

  “What’ll we feed them?”

  “Maggie can take care of that.”

  “Uh, sure.” I knew that. I felt kind of dumb. “When did they come?”

  “I’m not exactly sure. I checked on her just after you left this morning and nothing had happened. I looked again about a half hour ago, and they had all arrived by then. Maggie was washing them.”

  “They’re so cute.” That seemed like the right thing to say. Actually, they didn’t look like much of anything, just little blobs of fur. I could tell where their heads were, right up against Maggie’s belly, and two of them had little tapered tails sticking out. I didn’t know if the others had tails or not, ’cause I couldn’t see them. Some cats don’t have tails, right? And they had almost no ears, just little round stubs, not pointy like Maggie’s. There was a grey one and two orange ones and one that was black and orange and brown and a little bit white, too.

  “Can they walk?” I asked.

  “No, they’re almost helpless. They can’t even see. Their eyes aren’t open yet, and won’t be for a week to ten days. They have to depend on their mother for everything for the first few weeks, just like human babies do.”

  “Are they boys or girls?” I asked.

  “We’ll find out later, when they’re bigger. This one is called a calico,” she said, pointing to the one who was all different colours. “She’s probably a female. Males are almost never more than two colours.”

  “How come you know so much about cats?”

  “When I was about your age I had a cat named Sugar, and she had kittens too.”

  “When can I hold one?”

  “I think we should wait a day or two. Let’s let Maggie get used to taking care of them.”

  “Will she bite me if I touch one? I just want to see what they feel like.”

  “All right, but reach out very slowly. If Maggie growls at you, don’t go any farther.”

  I leaned forward and put my hand out. Maggie didn’t seem to be paying any attention, and I touched one of the orange ones very gently. I’ve never felt anything so soft in my life. Maggie didn’t growl or anything, and I stroked the kitten a few times and it sort of squirmed around. It was one of the ones that didn’t seem to have a tail, but when it moved the tail came out.

  “This is a big honour for you,” Mom said. “Mother cats usually look for a place to have their kittens where they know they’ll be safe, and she chose your room, your closet.”

  “It’s a good thing she didn’t pick Dad’s den, huh? Is he home? Did you tell him yet?”

  “He left right after you did this morning. I didn’t mention that Maggie might be expecting.”

  “Is he gonna be mad?”

  “You let me handle that.”

  “Okay.”

  Mom went downstairs to make lunch, and I sat and watched the kittens. Every so often Maggie would give them a few quick strokes of her tongue. She seemed pretty calm and relaxed, as if having kittens was no big deal. I wondered if she’d leave them to go downstairs to eat, or if we’d have to bring her food and water upstairs. And I wondered if she’d go outside to do her business. Then I wondered what we’d do when the kittens had to do their business.

  Boy, I’ve got a lot to learn.

  Really carefully, I reached out and patted Maggie’s head, and she seemed to like it, so I did the chin-scratch thing and then stroked her back, well, her side really, ’cause of the way she was lying down. She didn’t roll over to have her belly rubbed like she usually does ’cause the kittens were in the way, but she sort of stretched a little, so I kept on petting her. After a couple of minutes she started washing one of the kittens, the calico one, so I stopped.

  I heard a noise in the hall, and the door started to swing open. A tiger stuck its nose into the room and sniffed around, and when it saw Maggie and the kittens, it crouched down really low and started slinking across the room. I sat right in front of Maggie and puffed myself up like the tomcat in The Abandoned so I’d look big and fierce, but the tiger kept coming, and it kind of reared up on its hind legs and looked something like Dad, and then it was Dad, and he was glaring at the kittens and saying, “Fleas! Mess! Scratch the furniture!” I was really scared and wishing Jimmy was there, only he wasn’t, and I stood up and shouted “Go away!” and the tiger-Dad just sort of vanished, and right then Mom called me for lunch.

  About one-thirty Mrs. Morri
s brought Jimmy over to see the kittens. We couldn’t take them downstairs for him, so Mrs. Morris had to carry him upstairs. Jimmy didn’t like that. He didn’t say anything, but I could tell. He hates it when he can’t do things for himself. Mom folded the wheelchair and took it up, and when Jimmy was back in it we all went into my room.

  Maggie was still all stretched out, but she had her paw on one of the orange kittens, holding it in place while she washed it all over. It was turned around so we could see its little face, and it was cute, with a tiny pink pushed-in nose. It wiggled and squirmed and opened its mouth, but no sound came out. When Maggie was finished with that one, she let it go and it crawled back next to her belly. Then she began washing the grey one.

  “I’ve never seen baby kittens before,” Jimmy said. He was leaning way far forward in his wheelchair so he could see. “Can I have one? When they get bigger, I mean.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Then Jimmy looked at his mother, as if he should have asked her first, and she just smiled at him and nodded. Jimmy grinned. We stayed and watched the kittens for a real long time.

  June 29th

  Hey, Diary!

  I just had the best day ever! More important, Jimmy had his best day ever!

  He called me really early this morning and said his Dad had a surprise for him, only he didn’t know what it was, just that I was invited too. And he said we might have to miss lunch, or at least have it late, so I should eat an extra big breakfast.

  I almost didn’t go. All I really wanted to do was stay home and watch the kittens some more. Yesterday I got to hold them for the first time. That was amazing! They’re so tiny, and they’re warm, and when you pick them up they make these little tiny squeaking noises, and any one of them fits completely in my hand with room to spare. Maggie doesn’t seem to mind me holding them. I don’t go anywhere with them, just sit right there where she can see me.

  She almost never leaves them ’cause they seem to want to eat all the time, and she washes them a lot. Mom got her a kitty litter pan to do her business, and she used it right away. I wonder how come she knew how. And I wonder about the kittens, ’cause they’re too little to use the kitty litter pan, but the blanket’s still clean. Mom says Maggie takes care of that, too.

  Anyway, Mom said the kittens would be fine, that she’d keep an eye on them, and that I should go with Mr. Morris because they were so nice to invite me, and that it was partly because I was so nice to Jimmy, only I didn’t like to hear her say that. I don’t try to be nice to him, especially. We’re just friends, that’s all.

  So they came by about quarter to ten in the van and we drove out to the one-oh-one highway, and Mr. Morris wouldn’t tell me and Jimmy where we were going, and we got off at exit fifteen to Berwick, and Mr. Morris took old Route One until we passed a sign that said Waterville, and he turned into - guess what? - an airport! I never even knew it was there.

  It’s not a big airport like in Halifax, but it’s got a runway and hangers and a bunch of little planes sitting around, and we got out and started exploring, and this really nice man with a baseball cap that said “Flying School” on it met us and took us around to all the buildings, and we watched two planes take off. Mr. Morris told him we had an appointment for eleven o’clock, and the man said that the pilot would be a little late because he was on his way back from Fredericton with a passenger who missed his Air Canada flight, and I was wondering what was going on. At about ten after eleven a little white airplane with blue trim came in for a landing, and when it taxied up to the hanger and stopped - see, I know words like “hanger” and “taxi” from helping Jimmy fly his model planes - the pilot got out and helped a man climb down and handed him his briefcase, and the man went inside to call a cab.

  “Are you Mr. Morris,” the pilot said to Jimmy’s Dad, and when he said he was the pilot looked at me and Jimmy and said, “So this must be Jimmy and Hanna, right? Are you all ready to go?”

  Jimmy and I looked at each other in amazement. “Are we gonna go flying?” Jimmy said.

  “Of course,” the pilot said, and he was grinning a big grin. “That’s what we do here, you know.”

  I was so excited I could hardly stand still. The man opened the door to the plane’s cabin, and I could see that there were four seats inside. “You and I will get in back,” Mr. Morris said to me, and that confused me a little, ’cause in a car the adults always sit up front, but I climbed in beside him and he helped me fasten my seat belt, and then - Holy cow! - the pilot picked Jimmy right out of his wheelchair like he didn’t weigh a thing and put him in the pilot’s seat, on top of a cushion that let him sit up high so he could see out the windshield really well, and fastened his seatbelt too.

  “This airplane belongs to the flying school,” Mr. Morris told me. “It has dual controls. They use it to teach people to fly.” I looked over the seat back and saw two sawed-off steering wheels, one for each front seat, and all kinds of levers and instruments and stuff, and what I found out later was a two-way radio. The pilot gave us each a set of headphones - “That’s so we can hear each other talk over the noise of the engine when we’re up in the air,” he said - and then he pushed some buttons and the propeller started to turn. Jimmy turned around in his seat with the biggest grin on his face that I’ve ever seen.

  A couple of minutes later we were out at the end of the runway. I was really scared, ’cause the engine was making a lot of noise and the plane seemed so small. I’d flown in WestJet and Air Canada planes before, and they were huge, but this one was smaller inside than Jimmy’s van, and the walls seemed awfully thin. The pilot talked to somebody on the radio, and then he pulled out a knob on the dashboard and said, “Everybody sit back now and enjoy the ride,” and I did, but I could still see what he was doing between the front seats.

  The engine went faster and faster and got louder and louder, and all of a sudden we were rolling forward, and we were racing down the runway, and it was bumpy and everything rattled and banged until - wow! - we just leaped off the ground and all the bumping and rattling stopped and we were flying!

  Up and up we went, and I forgot to be scared. All the roads and houses and trees got smaller and smaller, and we could see the Bay of Fundy and even Isle Haute out in the middle of the water. The pilot turned the plane around and began to follow the highway, and pretty soon we passed over Kentville and New Minas, and everything on the ground looked really small, and then we were over Wolfville, and the pilot brought the plane down low really quickly, so that my stomach felt kind of queer.

  “Look for your house,” Mr. Morris told me, and I tried, but did you know that everything looks really different from the air?

  “There’s the university,” he said, and I spotted the big residence tower and University Hall with its clock, and the chapel. After that it was easy to find our street, and when the pilot turned around at the end of town and flew back over, I saw Mom and Mrs. Morris standing out on the sidewalk and waving to us. They were really tiny, but I knew it was them. Our roof is light grey, not black like most of the other houses. I never noticed that before.

  At the edge of town we crossed over the Cornwallis River and Port Williams, and the plane began to climb again. I noticed that Jimmy wasn’t looking out the window any more. The pilot was showing him the instruments and pointing to the knobs and levers that make the plane fly. I looked out the window again and saw we were over some farmers’ fields, and they looked really neat and organized, the way they do from way up on the Lookoff on the way to Cape Blomidon, like my grandma’s patchwork quilt. We were high enough again to see the bay, all the way out beyond Cape Split, and Mr. Morris pointed and said, “That’s New Brunswick over there.”

  And I leaned forward to look through the windshield, and that’s when I discovered that Jimmy was flying the plane! He had his hands on the wheel and the pilot didn’t, and a minute later he turned it just a little and the left wing dipped down and we were turning. We began to follow the shore line, and Jimmy did some
thing that I couldn’t see, but it looked to me like the wheel tilted forward, and we began to go down. I was kind of scared, but pretty soon we levelled off, just like his model planes do, and we were close enough to the ground to see foam from the waves breaking on the rocks. There was a fishing weir that looked like a maze in close to the shore, and we flew over a wharf where there were a whole bunch of cars parked and people walking around, and Mr. Morris told me they were tourists who came to eat lobster, and I realized it was lunch time, only I wasn’t hungry at all.

  I could see the pilot showing Jimmy what to do next, and he pulled out a knob on the dashboard and the engine got noisier, and then we started to climb again, higher and higher until we couldn’t see people any more, and the cars looked like tiny toys, and then we turned inland and kept climbing, and you know what? There are lakes all over Nova Scotia! I could see a whole bunch of them, all silver and shining in the sun, not blue like they seem to be from the ground. Jimmy looked back at me over his shoulder. I’ve never seen him so happy.

  And then the pilot and Mr. Morris disappeared. They just sort of faded away, and it was just Jimmy and me way up there all alone in the clouds, except for birds, lots of birds that flew along beside us calling “fee-bee, fee-bee.” Jimmy took my hand and we flew up and up and up to the very roof of Canada, where we could see the cities and the mountains and the Great Lakes and all the way to Vancouver and Hawaii and Japan, and it was like Jimmy and I were the only people in all the world.

  I’ve never been that happy before, not in my whole entire life.

  June 30th

  Dear Diary,

  Mr. and Mrs. Morris took Jimmy into Halifax this morning, to the Children’s Hospital. He has to have another operation. I asked Mom if it was an emergency, and she told me no, that they’d known about it for a couple of weeks, that it was because of Jimmy’s hydrocephalus - that’s the word I was trying to remember before - that was filling up his head with some kind of fluid and making him sick with headaches and stuff, ’cause it put too much pressure on his brain. He has something in his head called a shunt to let all that liquid drain away, and I guess it wasn’t working any more because he had to get a new one.