Chapter Four
Five Kitties

The entire person to the last cell reveals himself in his reaction to the word «cannot.»

Mama

On Monday morning, the children were getting ready for school. Kate was already standing at the door with a backpack behind her shoulders and her arms crossed, waiting for her brothers and sisters. Costa and Rita, who, although not going to school yet, promptly roamed around, crowding together with everyone.

Costa looked with suspicion at the shorts that they were just about to put on him. Then he began to grimace slowly. Lately he had become very suspicious. «They're girls'! I won't wear them!» he whined.

«Easy, fighter! Not a girl in shorts! It's a disguised hero in shorts!» Kate said quickly.

Costa pondered and allowed them to put the shorts on him, the disguised hero hiding under them.

First-grader Alex circled around the kitchen and, pestering everyone, asked them to find his notebooks.

«Notebooks for lazy Alex! Where are you? Hello!» Kate summoned, arms still crossed on her chest. Alex apprehensively looked sideways at her and fell silent.

Alena hopped along the hallway and, hastily tossing books into her backpack, moaned, «Oh! We have work today! Give me a hundred roubles for modeling clay!»

«Your were given some yesterday!» Kate said.

«Oh! I spent it! First, forty on a chocolate bar, and then there wasn't much left and I decided to spend…»

Peter's head popped out of the bathroom. It turned out he heard everything perfectly. «Give me one and a half million for modeling clay! And three more for an eraser! But then it's not enough for the new iPhone!» he said in a squeaky voice.

They threw a towel at Peter and his head hid. In the bathroom, something laughed terribly, a chair dropped, and the water was turned on. Peter usually went to school a minute before the bell and took with him a maximum of one notebook, which he tucked under his belt.

The morning was overcast. Costa, confusing words, called such a morning «overpass.» The sky was clearly preparing for something spectacular, but what exactly was still unclear. Clouds were moving like small flocks, gradually gathering into one very large cloud.

«I also want to annoy like everyone else!» Kate grumbled, waving the bag with her indoor shoes. «Give me a T-shirt! Not that one! Pour me some tea! Not that tea!»

«Then you can't grumble at all and be always right!» said Vicky.

Kate pondered. «In fact, yes!» she acknowledged. «Okay, then I agree to stay the way I am.»

Kate returned from school at about two, right after Alex and Alena. She stood by the window. Outside the window, snow was falling in large flakes and settled on an evergreen shrub and equally on the green grass. Stool, Lad, and Tot sat in front of the bushes and, with their heads up, looked with bewilderment at the snowflakes on their noses. Stool whined in fright. Tot growled. Lad demonstrated philosophical calm.

«What went on in school!» said Kate. «Everyone ran from class!»

«And the teachers?»

«The teachers also ran. Everyone stood in the schoolyard and threw snow! Quite wild, as if they had never seen snow! And behind the fence there, incidentally, were the power guys!»

«What, did they break the windows with snowballs?» Mama was surprised, cutting out three-dimensional snowflakes for home decorations. She had already cut out about twenty snowflakes and each had its own shape. For the time being, it was all cut like ordinary paper, but then poof! – a momentary movement of the fingers and a snowflake opened in the air, becoming three-dimensional.

«No,» Kate acknowledged reluctantly. «But these power guys also dropped their work and built a snowman with a light bulb instead of a nose… They found a large light bulb somewhere, massive like a soccer ball! But by evening, all the same, everything melts!»

After standing a little longer at the window, Kate made her way to the closet to put away clean laundry. Not so long ago she discovered that the children's clothes got mixed up in the laundry and nothing could be found when needed. Therefore, it was much simpler not to sort the things according to their owners but label the drawers with a marker, and each would easily find their own there. Now on the drawers were large labels PANTS, SOCKS, SHIRTS, TIGHTS, SKIRTS.

This principle of sorting revealed more and more advantages each day, but at first this idea had many opponents. Alex especially resented strongly. «What, I'll be wearing girl tights?»

«You do have eyes, where yours are and where the girls' are,» Kate retorted.

«What, I'm supposed to think?»

«Really! Think! Your head won't fall off! Come on, show me, what tights do you have on now?»

But Alex did not show any tights and hastily fled, because he had on Alena's tights for the reason that he was too lazy to look for his own in the pile of clothing. Kate hurriedly scattered the dried clothes according to pants, shirts, skirts and, waving away Costa, who was hindering her with a T-shirt, returned to Mama.

Suddenly, the intercom started to screech. Once, twice, then a third time.

«Who was so mad there?» Kate asked with displeasure.

It turned out that it was Vicky, who came in breathless and red. «Kittens were dropped off there at the school! Five of them! In a box!» she informed them.

Papa Gavrilov tore himself away from the computer, where he was trying to unravel an entangled plot. «So, fine!» he showed appreciation. «A school is the most suitable place. Children finish classes, the grandmas come for them. If you try very hard, a grandma can be persuaded to take a kitten.»

Vicky was mysteriously silent, averting her eyes. Papa looked at her. «Just don't say that…» he began slowly.

Kate, rushing from the spot, ran to the gate in her slippers and returned with a box. «Here they are! All five are here!» she shouted.

«Take them back!» Papa demanded.

«No, no! They'll freeze!» Vicky and Kate shook their heads.

«They won't. They are nearly a month old!»

«If you were about a month old and they threw you into a box out in the snow?» Kate asked with such reproach that Papa Gavrilov understood: he was not getting away from the kittens.

«Fine!» he conceded. «Then feed them, and later go, walk along the street, and repeat pitifully, 'Please take a kitten!'»

«I'll make an online ad!» Kate proposed.

Papa shook his head. «No way! The kittens don't get adopted online. It's a lost cause. There they'll only repost, ooh and ah. But no one will take them.»

«How do they get adopted?» Kate asked.

«Kittens are adopted exclusively by way of a chance nudge!» Papa stated. «A person sees a kitten and he's caught before his logical thinking kicks in. That's all. There are no other ways.»

«I won't grovel!» Kate claimed.

«And I'm afraid of meeting any of my acquaintances!» Vicky added.

«Well then, you also have no love for the kittens. Also no desire to help them. Take them away in the box to the school and put them where you found them,» Papa shrugged.

«What if you take compassionate photos and put them on social media, huh?» Vicky asked hopelessly.

«Yeah! You hold a kitten by the scruff of the neck over a pot of boiling soup with the caption: You have twenty-four hours to save this wretch!» advised Peter, having come down the stairs from his room. Peter had The Brothers Karamazov ^[6] under his arm. He read a hundred pages of this book a day; in doing so, having read exactly a hundred pages, even if there were, say, ten lines to the end of the chapter, he would stop. Peter went to the fridge on his way. He looked into it and snorted loudly.

«Is the soul wandering about in pots?» Vicky asked.

«What's to wander here? No food! The grannies are strolling by the sea!» Peter said.

«There's plenty of food!» Kate contested. «There's simply no pleasing you!»

«Very funny!» Peter cut off a third of the loaf of bread on a slant, smeared it with ketchup, generously sprinkled chicken seasoning on top of the ketchup, looked at the composition of the seasoning, and licked his lips. «E260!^[7] E283!^[8] Natamycin!^[9] Diethyl bicarbonate!^[10] I love it! Does anyone else want bicarbonate? Well, I offered!» he said and bit off a huge chunk.

«How can you eat this trash? I'd be sick!» Vicky asked, rolling her eyes.

«Really? Bet you wouldn't?» Peter suggested and again buried himself in the seasoning composition. «Ah, how sad! No E240! Without it, food isn't food!»

«What's E240?» Vicky asked.

«Cuc-koo, dark! E240 is formaldehyde!»^[11] Peter explained, and chewing the sandwich, went to his room. Three latches were heard snapping in turn.

An iron sheet rumbled on the opposite side of the fence. Andrew and Seraphim climbed over. Seraphim was gnawing with effort on ice cream found in the freezer. The ice cream was so hard that it was possible to knock a stone with it and the stone would respond with a bang.

«Look at this one!» Andrew said with reproach. «He didn't go to school because his throat hurts!»

«But it really hurts! Ask Mama!» Seraphim said and both brothers glared at each other.

«Oh, adoptable kittens have arrived!» Papa Gavrilov said gladly, especially placing his hopes on Seraphim, who, in his fantastic poetic absentmindedness, would even be able to adopt ten pregnant cats smeared with green dye and plastered with modelling clay.

Seraphim and Andrew together with Alena and Kate repacked the kittens from the box to an old hat, went along the main street, and began to repeat plaintively, «Ple-e-ease take a kit-ten! Ple-e-ease take a kit-ten!»

The kittens got out of the hat, scrambled up their sleeves, and did not stop meowing. Each of the children had to take a kitten. Seraphim carried two simultaneously, and the kittens managed to cling to passers-by. Seraphim's whine «Ple-ease take a po-oor little kit-ten!» turned out to be the most pitiful. Therefore, people often approached him.

Alex followed Seraphim, but without a kitten, because he was constantly losing it and the rest got sick of that. The snow was beginning to melt. It seemed as though it would not stay till evening. Alex scooped the snow from the fence, shaped it into snowballs, and threw them high above his head to see what they would fall on. The third snowball plopped on a taxi. The driver pretended to chase after Alex, who hastily hid behind Andrew.

«You're acting erratically! You don't know what your hands will do in the next minute!» said Andrew.

«Not true! I know!»

«Yes? And what are they doing right now? Well, tell me! Don't look with your eyes!»

Not heeding, Alex stared incredulously at his hands and discovered in surprise that they had picked up a rusty bolt from the asphalt and were trying to twist the nut from it.

«Please take a kitten!» Alena shouted and burst out laughing, because snow had fallen from a tree into her mouth. Alex, noticing that snow was falling from the trees, began to run forward and hit the branches with a stick.

Despite all efforts, the adoption of kittens went poorly. Most passers-by were either not interested in the kittens at all or said something like, «Should offer in the summer!» All the same, every five minutes some compassionate auntie would pop out from somewhere, press a kitten to her chest, and start to aah, «Children! Ah! Kittens for adoption! How charming! This is a boy! If it were a girl, I would take it!»

«We have a girl!» Kate declared and beckoned Alena with the next kitten.

The compassionate auntie tensed up a little and took the kitten no longer with such enthusiasm, «Oh! If the girl was lighter, this one has a dark stripe!» she said hurriedly.

«We also have a lighter one! Seraphim, bring yours!» Andrew said in a dull voice, he liked to bring every situation to a logical conclusion.

The compassionate auntie felt cornered. «What if they're sick?» she said, hastily looking for an argument to refuse.

«Then you show the vet!» Andrew suggested.

«No, no! They're too young! They'll die! If they were older, then yes!» the auntie said and ran away cowardly.

The children wandered along the sea for about two hours and began to lose faith in their lucky star. But here they gradually began to get lucky. The first kitten was taken by an old lady selling seashells. Moreover, she took it as if instantly, when they had already walked past and did not even whine «please take a kitten!»

«Look at you! Yelling! A boy? Come here, boy!» she said and, after glancing under the kitten's tail, slipped it into a bag and gave Seraphim a covered seashell. «You'll make an ashtray!» she said.

Seraphim stood in confusion with the shell in his hand. «But I don't smoke…» he began.

«He does, he does!» Kate hastily said, dragging him by the sleeve. «You have to think! If you don't need the shell, give it to me!»

The second kitten was taken by a gloomy saleslady from a store. Kate thought for the first second that she was approaching to kick them out. The third kitten was taken by a police trainee to give to his girlfriend. The trainee said that it was all the same to him whether it was a boy or a girl, because he could not stand cats himself.

«So it's a sacrifice in the name of love? How nice!» Kate said.

The trainee looked at her rather sourly. «Just tie a bow on it for me!» he demanded.

«Where do I get ribbon? Ah, here!» Kate instantly pulled an elastic band with a butterfly off Alena, and the kitten was decorated with colourful wings. It was no worse than ribbon.

Children on the playground wanted to take the fourth and fifth kittens, but Kate did not let them until they called their parents. As a result, one was allowed, but the other was not. The one who was allowed already had two cats at home, but the other, not allowed, did not even have a cockroach in a jar. So the fifth kitten was given near the sea to three cheerful uncles returning from a cafe after a birthday. The uncles said that they were from Krasnodar and that there were «actually no» cats there.

These Krasnodar uncles triggered great suspicion in Kate, and she made them swear ten times that they would not throw out the kitten. «Now someone is cheerful, but tomorrow he'll be very unhappy! And you'll chuck the kitty somewhere!» she said reproachfully, to which the uncles resentfully replied that they were not animals, that they were in fact artists and would not chuck the kitty anywhere.

The artists took the kitten at the area by the large fountain. The fountain had not worked since the end of September, but it still had unfrozen water at the bottom. In summer a large pond turtle swam in the fountain and a special platform was built so that it could get out and bask in the sun. And now Alex, for some unknown reason having climbed into the fountain, discovered that no one would get the turtle from the fountain to take it to warmth, and it was hiding between the upper layer of the boards of the platform and its base. Because, probably, it had been forgotten, and it never occurred to anyone to put a hand between the boards and check if there was anything there. But Alex came, because he generally put his hands everywhere.

«Get out of the fountain, genius! You got your legs wet! Grandma will kill me at home!» Kate yelled.

«She'll kill me,» said Alena.

«No, she won't. She'll kill me, because she knows that I'm the oldest,» Kate said modestly.

Alex got out of the fountain with the turtle in his hands. The turtle did not show signs of life. Its paws and head were hidden inside the shell.

«It's dead! Frozen!» said Andrew.

«No, it's in hibernation,» Kate argued.

«Let's poke it with a nail so it'll wake up!» Alex suggested.

«I'll poke you!» Kate said, and taking the turtle away him, put it inside her jacket. The turtle was about the size of a salad bowl and quite heavy.

Chilled but pleased, they returned home with a pond turtle and a whining Alex, who, besides getting his legs wet, managed to lose his hat somewhere. It was good that Grandma and Great-Grandma had not yet returned and only Papa and Mama were home.

«They let me get chilled! My hat was lost, and now they won't let me touch the turtle, which I found!» Alex was indignant.

«Did you try zipping up your jacket? By the way, you had a hood!» Mama said.

«Oh! I didn't think of it!» Alex suddenly realized.

«What didn't you think of? Zipping up the jacket? Or the hood?» Judging by Alex's confused look, he had thought of neither.

«Well, where are the kittens?» Papa asked. «Adopted?»

Kate nodded her head. «Done!» she said. «Now I know everything! Kittens can only be adopted by those who already have cats! And a kind or unkind person in appearance means absolutely nothing!»