The Pet Rock

One day, the family across the road found a mother rock and three baby rocks in their garage, and the next day they saw the mother rock and the two big baby ones were gone, but the littlest one was still there and the mother never came back for it.

They came down and told Momma and Poppa about it. They kept saying “kitten”, but I know they were really rocks, because the little girl of the family and her Poppa kept saying hard.

“It’s hard to see how a cat could manage, with our two dogs around. They chase anything that moves.”

“Lydia’s mom and I told her it’s hard to bottle-raise one. Most likely, it won’t make it, and that’ll be hard, but she wants to try.”

“It’s hard for us to ask you this, but we have to go out of town this weekend for my grandma’s 90th, and the kitten has to be fed three or four times a day.”

Poppa understood that they meant it was a rock, because he said, “We want to help you out, but we tried with little Daisy, and she died right in my hands. I’ll tell you: That was a hard thing.”

I remember when that happened. I thought Daisy was a kitten, but she must have been a pet rock, because it was hard when she wasn’t around anymore. And then there was a statue of a cat next to the stump outside one of the windows I look out of, and Momma and Poppa call it “Daisy’s stone”, so that proves it.

But Momma and Poppa said they would take care of this pet rock for the weekend.

I thought rocks only drank water from the rain and pee from outside cats, but this one drank special milk.

Then, a few days after that weekend, the little girl and her Poppa came by and she was crying. She said, “It’s too hard to take care of this baby. I worry about her when my brother and I are at school and Mom and Dad are at work. I’m afraid she won’t make it because we aren’t around enough a lot of the time. Would you take her?”

Momma said, “I can tell it was hard for you to ask that, but you want what’s best for the baby. That means you’re a GREAT Momma.”

Then Momma and Poppa said they would keep the kitten (really a rock, I say) on the days nobody would be home across the road. The little girl’s Momma worked some days and not other days, like three long days and four home days, and school was almost out, and the kitten (rock!) would be old enough to not need milk in a few weeks. They said, if she didn’t want to keep the kitten (pet rock) after that, they would take it.

After the girl and her Poppa left, my Momma and Poppa said, “It’s going to be hard for us, either way, but we have to give that little girl and that little scrap of life whatever help we can.”

So we had the pet rock some days and not other days.

After a couple of weeks, they let us into the room where they kept it, and they brought it out into the rest of the house where we were.

I liked it.

Chickie didn’t.

But the rock started eating real food.

And school got out, and guess what? Those barky, chasey dogs across the road love that little fuzzy rock! The big dog takes care of it like it was a puppy!

So the little girl is keeping the kitten rock.

Sure enough, when she picked it up after Momma and Poppa’s last day watching it for her, they said, “That was very satisfying. But saying goodbye was very hard.”

I knew it was a rock!

MY PROMPTS TODAY: pet rock

TA