Marbles was eight weeks old when Billy adopted him from the Animal Shelter. The kitten was named Marbles for two reasons. The strange arrangement of colors; brown, orange, gray, white and black formed a pattern of swirls on its side and looked to Billy like a cat's eye marble. The second reason came later. He was a marble stealer, with a passion for red marbles.
Billy was the envy of the neighborhood and on the school's playground. He was a natural at the game of marbles and had a whole bottom dresser drawer full of marbles he'd taken as prizes. He didn't play for fair, but for keeps and he never lost a game. Marbles the kitten was very fond of watching Billy drop his daily winnings into the bottom drawer. He loved the ringing and tinkling sounds the glass balls made as they bounced against each other.
When Marbles stood upon hind legs and leaned over the side of the drawer, batting one or two with his paws, Billy swatted at him and shooed him away. "No, Marbles!" Billy scolded. "Momma says you can't play with these. You could swallow one and choke to death." Billy pushed Marbles away and shut the drawer.
At first, the scolding Marbles got from Billy was enough to keep him away from the drawer when it was open. Everyday after that, instead of having kitten dreams about lapping milk, or batting at butterflies, the kitten dreamt about the little, round, glass globes in Billy's dresser drawer. He dreamt of having his own collection of marbles. Lots and lots of marbles.
The desire to get his little teeth around a marble was overwhelming. He followed Billy outside to play and watched him play with the neighborhood boys. The dirt was smoothed flat, a circle was drawn with a stick and then everyone took their places. Secreted in the honeysuckle, his huge, round eyes followed each marble as it was shot across the circle. Some clinked and some escaped the circle. One shot was so wild it rolled into the bushes directly in front of Marbles nose. In an instant he had it between his teeth and had darted off before the boys realized what had happened. None of the boys seemed to suspect the cat got it; they called it wild, and resumed their play.
Ecstatic with excitement about his steal, Marbles darted around the side of the house and slipped through the cat door swiftly. Just yesterday he had mastered the art of slipping through the plastic flap without getting his backend stuck halfway through. Now that he had his prize he was pressed to hide it somewhere safe. He slinked through each room of the house looking for the perfect hiding place. Finding that he was alone in the house, he dropped the marble for a bit of play. What good is it to have a pretty glass ball if you can't enjoy playing with it? He batted it around the dinning room floors. The blue and green swirls in the cats' eye marble sparkled as it spun. The sound it made as it rolled across the polished wood floors and ricocheted of the baseboards and the table and chair legs was music to his tiny ears.
His fun was over, however, when he heard footsteps coming up the stairs from the basement. He snatched up the marble and darted under the large cherry wood china cabinet. Just as he backed up into the darkest corner he dropped his prize. It rolled into the large grate of the cold air return shaft. Stunned that he'd lost is marble he dipped his paws in after it; into the blackness beneath the square openings. His marble clinked loudly when it hit the bottom of the shaft. Crestfallen, he laid upon the iron grate, paws hanging into the empty blackness, closed his eyes and cried. He'd just have to steal another one.
The next day, and the next few after that, Marbles was able to steal strays as the boys played near the house. With each prize successfully secreted into the house, he batted and played excitedly on the hardwood floors of the dinning room, and then when he was tired, or was about to be discovered, he aimed for the metal grate, give the marble one good swat and watched it disappear into its black depths. When he heard his latest stolen prize clink against the others, he knew his collection was safe. Solid blues and dazzling green cat's eyes, or salmon pink. Pale blue was interesting, too, but one day he discovered red. It blazed in the shaft of sunlight streaming in through the dinning room windows. He had to have more red ones.
Pickings were getting slim after about a week of following the boys from game to game. He thought he'd been rather good at being stealth, until the day he discovered red. His quest for nothing but red marbles made him careless and the next day he was caught. He spied a particularly brilliant red in the circle. He watched it for a few games and it never went astray. For three games he held fast in the pounce position. He could stand it no longer. His little mind whirled with instructions. Run fast, grab red, run even faster to the house. Go! Go! Go! his brain shouted. Throwing caution to the wind, he leapt from the shrub, scampered between the knees of a pair of dusty jeans, skidded to a halt in the middle of the circle, scattering marbles and dirt in all directions, and before he could latch his teeth onto his eyes delight, two fat, sweaty hands clamped tightly around his neck, squeezing relentlessly until another boy shouted, "Let go! That's my cat! Let him go!"
On Billy's order, the fat kid's hands fell away from the kitten's skinny little neck. Dazed and confused, embarrassed and disappointed at his failure, the kitten dashed into the bushes while six pairs of hands thrashed the shrubs trying to get at him. Another boy yelled, "I've got it!" and the hands gave up their pursuit. The game resumed without the slightest concern for the choking kitten. The red marble was an aggie and it had been saved.
From then on Marbles was afraid to follow the boys in pursuit of their stray marbles. For three days he sulked about the house trying to figure a way to get his teeth on more red ones. The next afternoon Billy came in for dinner, as usual, and emptied his pockets into the bottom dresser drawer. Marbles, who had been dozing on Billy's bed, opened his eyes at the sound of clinking marbles. The last marble Billy held up to the light. It was the aggie the kitten so coveted. Proudly Billy dropped it into the mix, shut the drawer, and then went to dinner.
Marbles was stunned. He couldn't believe he hadn't thought of this sooner. Was he still small enough to crawl behind the dresser, reach a paw over the side and scoop out a marble? He had to try. Once he got behind the dresser, he squeezed into the bottom drawer and landed right in the middle of the stash of marbles. He was in heaven. The bright red one that he'd nearly been killed over was right in the middle of the pile waiting to be snatched. But how was he going to do this?
He carefully closed his tiny teeth around the hard glass globe and scooted to the edge of the drawer. It was a tight fit and he knew he'd have to let go of the marble or he couldn't get out. He dropped it onto the carpet, squeezed through the opening, and while Billy ate supper, he had the time of his life quietly batting his prize around the room. Soon tired and needing another kitten nap, he pushed the marble into a corner under the bed. He waited until all in the house were asleep, and then he carried the red marble to his secret place. Once deposited with the others, Marbles could think of nothing else and began to pilfer only the red marbles from Billy's drawer.
The summer was over and Billy was back in school. Everyday he came home with more and more marbles. He never noticed that the red ones were disappearing from his trove. One evening Billy's father got up from the reading the newspaper and turned on the thermostat, a chill had settled through the lower rooms and it was time to turn the furnace on for the first time after the long summer. As the furnace kicked on and the cold air was sucked down through the cold air return, a faint tinkling of glass could be heard. With each cycle of the furnace the tinkling became louder, until it was a rumble. Puzzled, because the furnace had been serviced at the end of spring, Billy's father sent him to get the flashlight. Together father and son descended the stairs to the basement and pulled open the door to the shaft. Hundreds of marbles, mostly red, rumbled out, spreading across the basement floor in all directions. The kitten's secret had been discovered. As Billy and his father scrambled to collect the marbles, the kitten scampered about with delight, batting and chasing after his coveted red globes. It's time to find a new hiding place, he thought, as he sprinted up the stairs with the favored red aggie between his teeth, perhaps a hole in the wall this time.
(Marbles is a fictional story that I created from a combination of family cat stories. The picture is borrowed.)
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