On the west side of Sunrise Street, an orange kitten emerged from a soggy cardboard box, and he was mighty mad about the interruption of his midday nap. He sneezed and hissed at the droplets trickling down the edges of his makeshift house, slowly melting it into mush until it caved in on him. In response to this, the kitten made up his mind to find a warmer place, since there seemed little chance the spring shower would let up anytime soon.

His paws skirted across the sidewalk, around half a dozen puddles, until a car sprayed him from the road, resulting in a slew of cold meows and pent-up annoyance in the kitten’s chest. For ten minutes more, he stomped soggily down to the corner of the street, where he knew the nuns kept a bowl of milk in the backroom for all the unlucky strays in the city.

The kitten jumped through the window, his squeaky paws slipping across the tiled floor, until he came to the milk bowl by the fireplace. His reflection shone back in his face, prompting an indignant meow that should’ve gotten him the attention of one of the sisters, yet seemed not to be of any avail. Pouting, the kitten tipped the bowl over with his paw and shuffled his way over to the stairwell at the faint smell of salt wafting from upstairs.

After getting lost quite a few times and nearly being stepped on a few more, the kitten found himself at the bedside of a little girl and began to meow ferociously at the sight of her bedside table, steam rising from the top of it. The girl startled from where she lay sobbing beneath her pillow, and turned in his direction with a blank, cloudy-eyed stare.

“Sister Agatha, is that you again?”

The kitten meowed still louder, running his claws impatiently across the blue quilt that lay draped across the bed. He startled as the girl slowly knelt to the floor. She held her hands out, gesturing from side to side, as though she couldn’t quite make out where the creature was. The kitten cocked his head to the side and gazed at her curiously. Any normal human, he thought, would’ve scooped him up by now. This little girl, with her raven black hair, threaded with lavender ribbons, and her patched-up dress, seemed to be a little different from the average human. She smelled like ham, however, and so he tossed his caution to the wind and placed his wet front paws in the palm of her hands.

“Oh! You’re all wet, aren’t you? Now, what are you….a bunny, I suppose?” She mused as her hands began to feel all over the kitten, prompting an angry bite on her wrist.

“Ouch! That’s not very kind. Bunnies don’t have teeth like that, so you must be a ferocious little tiger, hmm?”

The kitten meowed in sheer frustration, a long and whining sound that prompted the girl to scoop him up into her lap. She used the corners of her dress to dab him hastily across the face, until his wet whiskers bristled against her touch and he hopped into her lap, making dough across her thighs in a desperate attempt to curry her favor into gifting him a piece of that lovely ham.

“I see. Are you hungry and cold? What’s a poor little kitten to do in such a state?” the girl mused as she took the ham and placed it in front of her knee, her fingertips cautiously feeling across the tips of her ears.

“You know, my name is Lacy Whitt. Do you have a name?” She felt softly across his neck, then frowned. “You don’t seem to have a collar, so I must assume you don’t. Why don’t I call you Beatrice then?”

The kitten, not knowing his own gender nor caring, meowed in agreement, his mouth sunk deep into the ham as he struggled to tear a bite free. Lacy broke a piece off for him and dangled it a bit too far in the air, prompting the kitten to jump and snatch it free.

“Beatrice, I’m in a right fine mess. I had a brother,” Lacy sniffled. “And he was the nicest fellow you ever would meet, but he got polio, like my Ma and Pa did. I miss him an awful lot, and here they are saying they’ve found me a home to go to, when they couldn’t find one for me and Sam together! I don’t wanna go, Beatrice, and if I could see two steps in front of me, I’d run away from this awfully smelly place. But it’s raining, and I can’t see anyhow, so I wouldn’t get real far …do you suppose I could do it, little fellow?”

The kitten hadn’t a clue what she’d said, nor what it meant, but he could see her eyes raining teardrops down on his ears, and could sense the aching sadness in her cool hands, so he stalked around her waist and purred happily as payment for his ham dinner.

“You know what? I’ll just have to take you with me. If they won’t let me, then I’ll tell them I’ll run away and they’ll never see me again. Sound like a nice idea?” Lacy asked with a halfhearted smile as she dried her eyes with her sleeve and snatched the kitten close to her chest.

***

The morning rose with a warm fog, and the kitten, now deemed Beatrice, was woken from his nap to the creaking of the door hinges. He jerked his head upright to see that the door had been barricaded by a nearby chair, and the voices of the sisters all meshed together in panicked chaos. Lacy’s little fingers scratched across his forehead, nearly whisking against his nose by mistake as she smiled down at the yawning critter.

“They’re not getting in here anytime soon, Beatrice. I got it nice and locked up…I think anyhow. Does it look nice and locked up? You’ve got eyes that work, don’t you? Or…I suppose neither of us could, and we’d never know that about one another, since you can’t talk….”

The kitten sneezed, while the girl laughed in excitement.

“Miss Lacy! You’ve got to open the door! The Peters family is here to meet you!” an old voice croaked down the hall, startling them both.

“No ma’am, I won’t be going with the Peters. I’ll be staying here until they leave.”

“Now, my dearie, you’ve got to understand, not many people would want a blind girl. You ought to give them a chance!”

“If they don’t like me because I’m blind, then I suppose I might as well be deaf to you all!” Lacy frowned as she threw a pillow in the general direction of the door, jolting it and starting an uproar in the hallway once again as it just barely hit the edge of it.

“Honey, won’t you please open the door?” a second voice crooned at the keyhole.

“If they wanna speak to me, then they can walk their legs on up here and talk to me through the door. Maybe I’ll let them in too.”

“You’re being awfully difficult for a beggar!”

“And you’re awfully difficult even for a hag!”

A third wave of outrage filtered through the door as the kitten absentmindedly jumped onto the tabletop and, finding a single morsel of ham left, began to feast on it merrily, paying no attention to the thuds of footsteps coming up the stairs.

“Are you Miss Lacy?” a man’s voice asked as a sudden hush fell over the hallway.

“Yes, sir. And I suppose you’re a Peters?”

“Yes, ma’am. Do you suppose you could open the door for me? Just so me and the missus could talk to you for a minute? The ladies out here said you sent for us?”

“If I let you in, will you make me a deal, Mr. Peters?”

“I reckon that depends on the deal.”

The kitten glanced up as the girl walked clumsily towards the door and placed her ear against it, a curious look across her face. She wrinkled her nose and whispered through the knothole in the wood, which she’d found by feeling across the whole surface. “If you steal me from this dump, will you let me take Beatrice with me?”

“Who’s Beatrice?”

“My dead brother Sammy’s kitten.”

“Miss Lacy, don’t you go telling fibs now!” the nun protested.

“You told me one when you said you came on a vow. You just couldn’t find a fellow before you got wrinkly, Sister Susan,” Lacy retorted as she stuck her tongue out at the door, feeling for the chair that lodged the handle shut with a cautious mischief twinkling across her clouded eyes.

“Beatrice is a kitten?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You can take a whole circus with you if you’d like, I couldn’t care less. Now, my wife’s crying an awful storm downstairs, so why don’t you let me in for a bit and we can negotiate just how big of a tent you’ll need?”

“You’re not lying, are you, mister?” Lacy demanded.

“No ma’am.”

Lacy yanked the chair free and rushed back to the bed, snatching Beatrice with a startled hiss from his place across the table. The man, accompanied by three red-faced nuns in penguin-colored garb, appeared in the frame. He knelt down in front of the kitten and began to pet him lightly, his fingers oil-stained and his smile bright as kindling.

“Why, we couldn’t leave a little lady like this behind, could we?” he mused as he held his hand out to the girl and then promptly took it back so as not to startle her. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Lacy, and Miss Beatrice, as well.”

“Beatrice, if he’s evil, you go on and bite him now!” Lacy hissed as she thrust the kitten in Mr. Peter’s direction, prompting a soft chuckle from the dark-haired fellow.

The kitten, however, didn’t bite. He instead meowed a soft welcome as he watched the humans around him speak, and was carried down a long flight of stairs and into a dilapidated parlour room that looked almost as though the polio virus had infected the very building. The wallpaper peeled in uneven sheets, and the room smelled of vomit and the wet humidity of a hot and rainy summer’s eve.

A velvet-clad woman sat across the sun-faded sofa with a blue swaddled bundle in her lap. Her eyes, blue as dying moonlight, were red and puffy at the edges. She glanced up at the entry of the awkward crew, her eyes especially fixed on the kitten, who promptly ignored her and fixated on the pink-cheeked baby in her lap, having never seen such a small human before.

“Suzy, this is Miss Lacy, and her good friend Beatrice,” Mr. Peters said with a sweeping gesture of his arms.

“Hello, Lacy! It’s so nice to see you, darling. I’ve looked forward to it for so long. Is everything alright? Are you feeling well?” Mrs. Peters asked with a soft tilt of her head.

“Yes, ma’am,” Lacy replied as her grasp around Beatrice tightened until the kitten meowed in protest.

Mr. Peters slowly sank into the sofa, eyeing his baby lovingly as his hands caressed the redness of the infant’s cheeks. “Dearest, Lacy doesn’t feel well about leaving her own little baby behind. What do you suppose we take her with us? Maybe Tommy will like her.”

“Oh, surely!” Mrs. Peters echoed.

“If I’m going with you, you have to let me take her!” Lacy shouted, startling the couple and nearly prompting the baby to cry.

“That’s alright, dear, I don’t mind,” Mrs. Peters said, a soft smile overtaking her lips.

“And what about all my other things? My blanket?”

“Of course.”

“And my pillow?”

“Surely.”

“And…and…and what about my bunny?”

Mrs. Peters rocked the baby with the edge of her knee and glanced up at Lacy once more. “Now, whether that bunny is alive or stuffed, it’s quite all right with me! Whatever makes you feel most at ease, darling.”

Lacy frowned as the kitten meowed once more as her grip tightened again. She buried her face in his fur with a confused downward tilt of her lip. Beatrice could feel her heartbeat quicken, and finding the sound somewhat lulling, yawned and snuggled up against her arm as her fingertips brushed against his forehead. She clumsily made her way to the nearest armchair, careful to check that no one else was sitting in it before she made herself comfortable.

“Would you mind living with a little one?” Mrs. Peters asked.

Lacy hesitated for a moment, then nodded slightly to herself. “No ma’am. I like babies, they’re awfully small and warm.”

 The kitten yawned, stretched across her arms, and closed his eyes as the conversation reverberated through the room. He startled at the sound of laughter before being lulled back to sleep, finding a quiet sort of peacefulness about this room full of people, with the nuns out of the way and Lacy’s arms to comfort him.

He didn’t wake again for hours, until he was placed in the backseat of a black car, shielded from the rain in the lap of Lacy Whitt. He awoke with a stuffed bunny in his face, decorated with the affection of tear-stained ears. The kitten, pleased with his new arrangement, curled up and fell asleep once more, nuzzling against the bunny, to the joy of the young Peters couple, who swooned over the little thing and spoke excitedly about what it would need from the store. All the while, the kitten soundly slept mere feet away from their own little darling, and the world seemed a much calmer place for it.

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Molly Hein is an aspiring writer whose works have been published in the literary magazines Echoes and Images (both Spring 2024 and 2025), Issue 3 of Belladonna’s Garden, and The Mockingbird’s 2026 issue. She enjoys playing chess, watching anime, and spending time with her cat Bianca. To keep up with her writing, please check out @mollyfaithhein on Instagram.