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A Boy, a Cat, and a Dream to Fly

A young boy named Elmer meets a cold and wet alley cat on a rainy day and invites her home to sit by the warm furnace. While the cat is grateful, Elmer's mother does not want a stray cat in the house. Elmer continues to secretly feed the cat for weeks until his mother finds out and throws the cat out. Later, Elmer and the cat talk in the park about Elmer's dream to fly, and the cat tells him about discovering something on a remote island that could help him fly as a boy.

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Jack Reacher
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70 views5 pages

A Boy, a Cat, and a Dream to Fly

A young boy named Elmer meets a cold and wet alley cat on a rainy day and invites her home to sit by the warm furnace. While the cat is grateful, Elmer's mother does not want a stray cat in the house. Elmer continues to secretly feed the cat for weeks until his mother finds out and throws the cat out. Later, Elmer and the cat talk in the park about Elmer's dream to fly, and the cat tells him about discovering something on a remote island that could help him fly as a boy.

Uploaded by

Jack Reacher
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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One cold rainy day when my father was a little boy, he met an old alley cat on

his street. The cat was very drippy and uncomfortable so my father said,
"Wouldn't you like to come home with me?"

This surprised the cat—she had never before met anyone who cared about
old alley cats—but she said, "I'd be very much obliged if I could sit by a warm
furnace, and perhaps have a saucer of milk."

"We have a very nice furnace to sit by," said my father, "and I'm sure my
mother has an extra saucer of milk."
My father and the cat became good friends but my father's mother was very
upset about the cat. She hated cats, particularly ugly old alley cats. "Elmer
Elevator," she said to my father, "if you think I'm going to give that cat a
saucer of milk, you're very wrong. Once you start feeding stray alley cats you
might as well expect to feed every stray in town, and I am not going to do it!"

This made my father very sad, and he apologized to the cat because his
mother had been so rude. He told the cat to stay anyway, and that somehow
he would bring her a saucer of milk each day. My father fed the cat for three
weeks, but one day his mother found the cat's saucer in the cellar and she
was extremely angry. She whipped my father and threw the cat out the door,
but later on my father sneaked out and found the cat. Together they went for a
walk in the park and tried to think of nice things to talk about. My father said,
"When I grow up I'm going to have an airplane. Wouldn't it be wonderful to fly
just anywhere you might think of!"

"Would you like to fly very, very much?" asked the cat.

"I certainly would. I'd do anything if I could fly."


"Well," said the cat, "If you'd really like to fly that much, I think I know of a sort
of a way you might get to fly while you're still a little boy."

"You mean you know where I could get an airplane?"

"Well, not exactly an airplane, but something even better. As you can see, I'm
an old cat now, but in my younger days I was quite a traveler. My traveling
days are over but last spring I took just one more trip and sailed to the Island
of Tangerina, stopping at the port of Cranberry. Well, it just so happened that I
missed the boat, and while waiting for the next I thought I'd look around a bit. I
was particularly interested in a place called Wild Island, which we had passed
on our way to Tangerina. Wild Island and Tangerina are joined together by a
long string of rocks, but people never go to Wild Island because it's mostly
jungle and inhabited by very wild animals. So, I decided to go across the rocks
and explore it for myself. It certainly is an interesting place, but I saw
something there that made me want to weep."

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