Two tiny kittens stared at me with their large green eyes set wide apart on angular gray faces. These siblings were abandoned by their mother and then driven to the tourist base, where my sister Katya and I spent this summer together with our grandparents. The driver thought he was doing them a favor. With ten little cottages full of friendly people, surely the kittens would never be hungry.
As the kittens grew more and more attached to us, my grandfather, Katya, and I launched a campaign to take the poor animals home with us, but my grandmother would not budge
“I lived with his animals my entire life,” she stated, glasses flashing, while nodding in grandpa’s direction as if he was well a meaning, but deeply misguided child. “I have to draw the line somewhere.”
Meanwhile, showing a true genius, the kittens learned to hunt all by themselves. Night after night, both of them came to our house, and as the large bugs, tired from the exuberance of their lamplight carnival, retired to the ground to rest, the kittens played with them. A tiny gray paw shot out to slap the beetle, which simply moved away, too lazy to even try to escape. A kitten repeated the blow, but its mindless prey was still completely oblivious to the danger it was in. Finally, the kittens grew weary of this game, and the beetle’s existence ended with a loud crunching sound, as sharp teeth bit into the rock-hard wings.
The last day of our vacation came, and my grandmother still showed no sign of giving in. At grandpa’s comment that this might be his last chance to adopt a cat before dying, she cried out indignantly, tears shining in her eyes, “It’s still a question which one of us will die first!” That morning Katya and I fed the kittens for the last time. She kept whispering them hopeful, encouraging nonsense, “Surely, you’ll be adopted eventually.” A bitter lump formed in my throat; I could not speak. Her words made everything so much worse since I knew almost for certain that they would not come true.
My eyes filled with tears, as a quote from Exupery’s Little Prince flashed in my mind. “We are responsible for those who we adopt.” If only the kittens did not come to trust us, if we did not feed them, care for them, perhaps they would be better off now, more prepared to enter the real world. We were abandoning them to the wishes of heartless Fate, showing them kindness and then throwing them out on the street… Of course, we had no choice, but was this really an excuse for the death of two living creatures, who certainly would not survive the coldness of Russian winter in the midst of a menacing forest?
Yet, even while thinking this, I knew I would have done the same thing all over again. I would not have been strong enough to refuse helping them. Perhaps, earning their trust was wrong, but I cannot bring myself to believe it within heart.
