SueAnn Porter

The following is a “free write” exercise from my writing class:

[inspired by “Splish Splash”]

Like most families growing up in the 1960’s, Saturday night bath time was a big event. My brother, sister and I would tell my mother, “Aww, I don’t want to take a bath.”

But once I got in the tub, with the warm water and bubbles, I didn’t want to get out. My mother would have to bang on the bathroom door several times to tell me to get out of the tub.

After our baths, we would put on clean pajamas.

One night, we were getting ready for bed, and went upstairs. We each went to our own bedroom.

“Where’s the cat?” my mother yelled up the stairs.

“I don’t know,” answered my sister Mary.

“It better not be in your room.”

“It’s not,” Mary insisted.

“Come out here in the hall and talk to me!” my mother said, as she climbed the staircase.

My sister ran into the hall. A suspicious bulge on the right leg of her pajamas appeared.

“You don’t have the cat?” my mother’s voice grew angrier.

Just then, a wagging cat tail appeared from under my sister’s pajama leg. The cat meowed.  From the look on my sister’s face, I’m guessing the cat was digging his claws into her leg. But she insisted, “The cat is not in my room.”

My mother grabbed the cat out from my sister’s pajama leg and brought him downstairs. I went back to my room and muzzled my laughter for quite some time.

A few months later, my father stayed late at work one evening. My mother had left his dinner on the table with a towel over it to keep it warm. When my father got home, he discovered that the cat had jumped up on the kitchen table and ate his chicken dinner. The cat mysteriously disappeared one day soon after that.

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