Hail on a Tin Roof

Rosvita: The storm came in late and hard that afternoon, obscuring the already darkening horizon. There was just enough time to warn the workers in the fields to run for shelter.

“Get inside,” I yelled.

La Yapa: It was a dark and stormy night…. I know, I know, they tell me that bleeming beagle Snoopy wrote that line first, but it’s true! My adventure began on a dark and stormy night. Okay, okay, afternoon. Look, it’s my story, okay? And just so you know, what happened wasn’t my fault!

But I’m getting ahead of myself…

Rosvita: I ran for the house. The storm would blow over soon enough, but it could bring golf-ball sized hail, big enough to dent car roofs! If we were the unlucky ones this time, it would strip every leaf off the vines ruining that year’s harvest while leaving my neighbour’s fields untouched. Such was life. But staying outside wasn’t an option.

“Everyone, run for cover!”

La Yapa: My gorgeous eyes were hardly open, and yes, okay, you could say I was the best at climbing over my siblings to get to my mother. So many siblings! Black ones, white ones, black and white ones. None as pretty as me, of course. So that what happened to me happened at all is entirely a mystery. I mean, just look at me! Have you ever seen such perfection?

Rosvita: I had a farm in Argentina in the foothills of the Andes, a low-slung adobe house with a tin roof surrounded by some several acres of land. It fronted a street marking the outskirts of a small Mendoza town, a lane with little traffic bordering scrub lands stretching into the distance. Occasionally a school kid passed on a bicycle, or a man driving a mule and cart, rarely an old pick-up rattled by.

La Yapa: One afternoon, I remember it well, oh, the horror! I shudder to think of it. The noise of big boots approaching, the crinkly noise, and then the slippery bag, and then me falling. Tumbling down into the bag until I reached the bottom! What was happening? Where was Big Boots taking me? What was that slamming? What was that rumbling? Why was I swaying from side to side? What was this indignity? What had I done, except be exceedingly cute? Where was I? Where were they taking me?

Rosvita: Once under cover, I could hardly hear myself think. Hail hammering on tin sounds like a herd of horses thundering overhead. I stood under the veranda, leaning against the door frame, watching the ground turn white with ice. The temperature dropped an easy ten degrees in minutes. We were in for a doozy of a storm.

La Yapa: Then everything stopped. We were standing still. I heard Big Boots grunt and then up, up, up, I went in the horrid sack. I could hardly believe it – I was sailing through the air. Me! Flying! I’m not supposed to fly! Beautiful creatures like me, we don’t…fly! We leap, we pounce, we always land on our feet. But fly? No!

Boom, I landed with a thump. I flattened myself in the slippery sack, waiting, not making a noise. I heard Big Boots further away now, then the rumbling sound again – have I told you about my excellent hearing? No? Maybe later. Then the rumble got further and further away.

“Waaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittttttttttttttttt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Rosvita: And then I heard it! A high pitched scream!

La Yapa: “Waaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittttttttttttttttt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Rosvita: Then there was nothing. Was my hearing playing tricks on me?

Then again!

La Yapa: “Coooooommmmmmmeeeee baaaaaaaaaccccccckkkkk!!!!!!”

Rosvita: I couldn’t imagine what it was! A pitiful wail above even the noise of frozen rocks pounding on metal. Was it human? What creature could possibly be out in a storm like this one? What creature could be making a noise like that? I hesitated. Running out into the storm would be foolish, bruising at the very least. Then the cry came again.

La Yapa: “Heeeeeeeeeeeellllllllppppppp mmmmeeeeeeeee!”

Rosvita: I couldn’t ignore it. I simply couldn’t.

I pulled my wax jacket off the hook by the door. I had brought it with me from Scotland, just in case, and rarely used it. Now seemed the moment. Another cry came as I threw it on and peered out into the dark.

La Yapa: “Ooooh, oooooh, oooooh!” Poking my nose out of the disgusting sack, I looked out. Glisten was falling out of the sky, sharp and hard. Dilemma! If I left the bag, I would be pelted by glisten, but stay in the bag, in the cold and the dark? Where was my mother? Where were my siblings? Better to make a run for it. Way in the distance, were those lights? I pulled my perfect little nose back in to think.

“Heeeeeeellllllpppp!”

Rosvita: The sound seemed to come from the empty field across the street. I ran out the front gate, holding the hood of the jacket over my head, but there was nothing to see except a few plastic bags and rubbish thrown out by uncaring drivers. The scream came again, louder now, insistent.

La Yapa: Whhhhhhhyyyyy meeeee? Meeeeeeeeee? Meeeeeeeeeee!

Rosvita: Then one of the bags moved! What could possibly be making that amount of noise? I approached the bag carefully. The sound was unlike anything I had ever heard. Something between a woman’s voice and an injured bird. Peacocks were known to scream like a woman. What would fly out at me when I opened the bag?

La Yapa: Glory to Bastet, the fiercest goddess of us all, someone finally obeyed my call! But it wasn’t Big Boots. It didn’t grunt or smell like Big Boots – have I told you about my excellent sense of smell? No? Later! So I waited quietly. But as smart and curious as I am, I didn’t wait for long.

Rosvita: Then a tiny black paw clawed its way out of the bag, and a kitten tottered out into the rain. A kitten! A tiny, tiny kitten. I couldn’t believe that something so small could make that much noise.

La Yapa: And then, I saw her. She was tall, too, but not like Big Boots. I screamed.

“Loooookkkk at meeeeeeee!”

She jumped back. Really, I don’t know why. Little ol’ me? So I screamed again. Loud. I was miserable, cold, hungry. Everyone needed to know it. And then--

Rosvita: – and then she promptly fell into the mud.

La Yapa: Hey! Whose story is this, anyway?

Rosvita: Yes, of course, yours, my princess.

La Yapa: Hmmmph. So. She came closer this time and, silly me, I collapsed… tragically. Right into a puddle. Oh, the shame of it. Now I was miserable, cold, hungry, and filthy and the glisten kept hitting me over and over. I screamed.

“Aaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeee!”

Rosvita: Yes, okay, okay, Madame La Y, I think they got it.

I grabbed the kitten—

La Yapa: Me!

Rosvita: Yes, you. It squealed, squirming in my hand, slippery and wet. Wrangling its body around it looked at me with the enormous angry eyes still tinted with the blue that proved they hadn’t yet seen much of the world, such as it was. I popped it into my jacket and ran for the house.

La Yapa: It’s true. She picked me up. Lifted me straight up into the air! With a quick twist of my body, I turned around to look her straight in the eye. What was the plan, here? She better not try any-- But before I could make another peep, things turned warm and dark and I could smell her and hear a steady thu-thump, thu-thump right next to my ear. Hmmm, better.

Rosvita: The drumming on the roof continued as I found an old towel, opening closet doors with one hand, holding the kitten in the other. I didn’t want a kitten. I didn’t want any pets. Pets tie you down. Nothing in my life tied me down, not a partner, not children, not even the farm, which was on a lease.

La Yapa: Listen, these tall creatures are funny things. One throws you out, another takes you in. You never know. This one had found me but didn’t seem too happy about it. Certainly not as happy as she should be. I mean, it’s me we’re talking about. Me! I could hear her muttering and slamming things. But then, you never can tell because the tall things don’t drrbdrrbdrrb like we do when we’re happy. So, how are you supposed to know?

Rosvita: A curse upon people who simply sling unwanted pets out onto abandoned fields, I thought. On the other hand, poverty was not uncommon here. I understood. It happened. But I didn’t want a kitten. I travelled. I saw the world. I went on adventures. I didn’t have food for this thing that fit into the palm of one hand. What did it eat? What did it need? Milk? I wasn’t even a milk drinker! What was I going to do with a kitten?

La Yapa: So, I waited. And I watched. I’m clever like that. You’ve noticed, right? I decided that any sign of danger and I’d be off. I knew how to take care of myself. I wasn’t born yesterday. I was born eleven days ago. See these eyes? They were wide open already. Nobody was going to pull the wool over these peepers. Still, it was warm and the thu-thump thu-thump in the dark coat-cave sounded kind of nice. Would there be food soon, I wondered. Hmmmm, I was feeling kind of, hmmmm, sleeeepy…

I was just settling into my comfortable dark cave when the Tall One yanked me back into the light. Too cold, too bright again – aaargh, my eyes weren’t used to it, make it stop –

Rosvita: The creature sitting in the palm of my hand blinked at me, I looked at it.

La Yapa: Wait. CREATURE? Who are you calling “creature?” Moi? Superstar? Light of your life – admit it. You know it’s true—

Rosvita: It was filthy—

La Yapa: Filthy??

Rosvita: Filthy. First things, first. I tried wiping it down with a towel, but it was covered in mud. I knew cats hated water, but there was nothing else to be done except hold it under the faucet.

La Yapa: Then suddenly a weird feeling ran down my back. Something inside me said I wasn’t supposed to like it one bit, whatever it was. But…

Rosvita: I figured it would start screaming again, but no, it was quiet. The water ran the mud off its back and into the sink. I was careful not to get water in its ears. Its tail was the length of my little pinkie. I pinched mud from between its tiny toes and cleaned under its neck. I turned it on its back, and it let me run the warm water over its bubble of a belly.

La Yapa: … it was warm, and the Tall One was careful. I didn’t even need to use my claws or bite her a warning or scream. That would be my last resort, of course.

Rosvita: It didn’t fight me but lay there quietly in my hand.

La Yapa: Hmmm, this wasn’t half bad! The icky dark mud was running off me, so that was good. I let the Tall One clean between my toes and even under my neck where normally no one, but no one would be allowed to touch, certainly not someone I just met! But, oh, it was all so… Ahhhh. I was just about to drowse off when the thought occurred to me that if she was going to be mine, I’d better give her a name, so I looked deep into her eyes.

Rosvita: And then we locked eyes.

The hail had stopped thundering on the roof. The world had gone silent. In a few seconds the birds would start wildly chirping the end of the storm, the ice would melt away, and the sun would come out as if the storm hadn’t even happened. Maybe the harvest would be ruined, maybe not. But in that moment, our gaze was fixed on the other.

La Yapa: In that moment, the future unfolded: she’d be mine forever.

Rosvita: The look we shared told both of us our future: she would be mine and I hers without a doubt in the world.

La Yapa: I decided to call her Mut, which even the smallest cat knows means mythical mother.

Mut: Ten years, thousands of miles and a little cat backpack later, we’re still together. “La Yapa” means a little extra something. She’s the little extra something that came with the hail thundering on a tin roof.

La Yapa: And that’s our story....Mut, you think I should tell them about the time I escaped on the plane to Miami and we both got put in time-out by the stewardess?

Mut: Hmmm, maybe next time...