My dad is a sailor, served in the Merchant Navy. In the 90s, he signed up for any flights to bring, if not money, then things or even food, something for us, something for sale, so that there would be money while he was at sea. I won’t say that we lived poorly, but we never built either. My brother is 3 years older than me, so I wore his clothes, we collected bottles and scrap together to buy treats for ourselves.
When dad had a vacation, the first thing he did was to gather us in an armful and take us fishing or to the forest, or to walk in the park for the whole day so that mom could relax. But one day he received a telegram from his hometown and instead of the usual vacation walk, he packed a small bag, kissed all of us and left. How we wept! Mom couldn’t calm us down because we thought he had abandoned us.
A week passed, and he returned, but not alone, but with a little girl (4 years old). His first school love died of tuberculosis, and his little daughter was left alone; they were going to send her to an orphanage, but his aunt sent him a telegram, as if he was the father and would come for her, so the girl was not touched. But they took out everything that was not killed from their apartment. The child was living in the neighborhood, dirty and half-naked, until my father arrived. So they appeared on the threshold.
Mom immediately picked her up in her arms and carried her to wash, feed, sleep, and dad sat on the bench by the door and cried. I was 7, my brother was 10, and we didn’t love her right away, although our new sister didn’t give any reasons. She was like a ghost, small, pale, silent. She didn’t take our toys, didn’t come into our room (we lived in a two-room apartment, she slept in her parents’ room), never got naughty and didn’t demand anything.
From her past life, she brought only a soft hare and a thread with mismatched beads, which she then put on the hare, then on her neck, pulled and mumbled something. Mom kept trying to stir her up, singing, reading to her, but it was all in vain. She cried for the first time when my brother and I took her hare and threw it on the closet. She was standing in front of the closet, sobbing and pulling the handles up, and we were laughing. Then we got a great blow from Mom.
Some time passed without incident; summer came and they began to let us all go for a walk, but with the condition that we watch the baby. She didn’t go anywhere, where you put her there and take her, so we didn’t really burden ourselves. On the day when everything changed, as always, we left her at the entrance on a bench.
We were calmly hacking at knives behind the house when we heard screams and some strange sounds. Sensing something was amiss, we rushed to the entrance, and there a pack of dogs was raging, and ours was sitting on the entrance visor and holding a kitten in scratched hands, not crying, only her eyes were huge with fear. When we drove the dogs away, we saw an old hare torn apart. And here it came to us that our fry could well have been in the place of the hare. I was sobbing with fear and guilt, my brother was collecting the remains of the hare and was also sniffling when my mother ran out to us. She hugged my brother and me and at that moment we heard – mom, look what a cat we have! And my sister’s proud face.
Then, together with the neighborhood teenagers, we took my sister off the visor, collected a hare, washed the kitten, smeared scratches and wiped tears. After a while, dad returned from the flight, we told him everything, and he was only surprised how a 4-year-old child could climb on the visor. My sister then sat on his lap and said very confidently – the cat helped me!
I don’t know how true it was about the roof, but the Cat definitely helped her — finally let go of the horror that she experienced with the death of her mother. She began to teach him all sorts of tricks like give a paw, and slowly began to come to life herself. My brother and I also got involved in the upbringing of the Cat, and imperceptibly became not ideal, but real brothers for our baby. Now we already have families and children, everyone has excellent relations with each other, parents are very happy with grandchildren and relatives and foster children.
