Eigo de Essay
Chi-chan Tomoki was a third grader then. He and his parents lived in my neighborhood. I had some small English classes for kids at home, and this shy little boy was one of the students. He rang my doorbell on the day I wasn't expecting him. When I opened the door for him, he asked me if I could take care of a kitten. According to Tomoki, he heard a faint mew inside the large dumpster of his apartment building. He dug into the trash and found a tiny kitten in a plastic bag. He took it home, but his mother said flatly that she didn't want a cat at home. Then he remembered me, who had a cat and might be a good candidate for the kitten's foster mother. If he had come to my place with the kitten, I might have succumbed to the temptation, but he didn't. I actually never saw the cat who was later named Chi-chan. I took a book, "How to Keep Cats", out of my bookshelf and showed him the pages about kittens. I told him that my cat had never had a companion before and wasn't sure if he would accept the kitten. I added that I would ask around, so he should keep the kitten for a while. A typhoon was expected that night, and I knew Tomoki's mom wouldn't tell him to put the cat back into the dumpster. He went home with the book. Tomoki came to my English class the next week with a big grin. He said his mom had started to call the kitten Chi-chan from a Japanese word Chibi, which means the little one. When his dad came home from work, the first thing he asked was how Chi-chan was that day. The little one rescued from the dumpster charmed them. The family moved out of my neighborhood some years later, but they keep sending me New Year greeting cards. Along with the three members of the family, the cat's name had been written down until two years ago. Chi-chan passed on at the age of 23. Hadn’t Tomoki heard the mew in the dumpster on the day before the typhoon, it would have been the last day of her life. How lucky she was living long and happy years with the loving family! From the writing on the New Year card, I also learned that Tomoki got married and became a father. That shy little boy, a father? With the card in my hand, I didn't know whether I should laugh or cry.
|