From Stories from Jones Farm
Copyright May 1992
[part 5]
Just then I saw my
husband at the door. I felt like Lucy and Susan suddenly seeing Aslan in Narnia
after starting their adventures in the
Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. He was holding Cat.
“You’ll never guess where
Cat was,” he said. “He was under the seven-day chest.”
“That’s what Alice was
trying to tell me then. She thought he was hurt.”
“Yeah,” said my husband, “and
still lying there at the scene of the accident.” We smiled at how Cat always
seemed alive to Alice, then suddenly held each other tightly, feeling how
scared we both were.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“They’re just about to do
a CAT-scan,” I said.
My husband bounded over
to the CAT-scan area to see Alice and give Cat to her. By then her screams were
coming from the area, and it comforted us a bit that she could still scream
like that. At the sight of Cat she nestled down, whispered something into Cat’s
ear, bit his ear affectionately for good measure, and became very quiet and
still, holding Cat across her tummy. She seemed to have the impression that Cat
was about to be scanned. At the end the nurse gave Alice a shot to reduce
swelling, then stuck the hypodermic into Cat, so Alice would think he had been treated,
too.
While we were waiting for
the results, the nurse who was our neighbor got into telling us about when she
was a little girl and had pulled a wardrobe over on herself. Luckily, she had
been standing at the door spot, so that the door just opened, and she was
inside the wardrobe on the floor when her parents found her. I told her the
stories handed down in our family about two uncles of mine—one of Mom’s
brothers in Virginia, and Dad’s brother in Tennessee—who during the Depression
had each managed to climb up their mothers’ China cupboards and bring down all
thr dishes without getting hurt as the cupboards fell. There must have been
pieces of Depression glass everywhere in those days.
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