Homework: Story Time

For this week's homework, Scalzi asks:

Weekend Assignment #82: What was your favorite bedtime story as a child?

(I actually did an entry on this back in February, but I'll go back to the same well for this.)

When I was a kid, I absolutely loved a book called Peppermint.  See, there was this little kitten called Peppermint that nobody wanted, and this little girl took her home.  And Peppermint was so dirty, she needed a bath, and somehow she fell in a pan of bluing (which dates the story, and probably explains why the book is now out of print).  So Peppermint ended up as a pretty blue kitty.  And the girl's mom tied a big pink ribbon around Peppermint and she won first prize at the kitten show.  And Peppermint and the little girl lived happily ever after.  The end.

I adored this book.  I always wanted it read to me -- or to read it myself when I was able.  It's probably what made me want a cat when I was a kid (although I never had one.)  When I was older and started babysitting, the kid I sat for had the book, and I loved reading it to her, too.

Fast forward another twenty years, and I finally got myself a cat.  Jasmine was something of an impulse adoption.  A woman had a box of kittens outside the grocery store.  They all had "chocolate" names -- there was "Chocolate Chip" and "Chocolate Cake" and "Chocolate Pudding" ... and Jasmine.  She was the odd kitten out, both name-wise, and in that she was injured.  Jasmine had a limp (I didn't know it then, but her leg was broken).  I was somehow drawn to the cute widdle injured kitten that nobody else wanted, and I took her home with me.

Last February, I got a hankerin' to read Peppermint again, and I found a copy for sale on eBay, so I snapped it right up.  I hadn't read it in at least twenty years, so my memory of the story was a little hazy.  The thing that I hadn't remembered was that all the kittens in the book were born in a candy shop, so the proprietor of the shop gave them all candy names.  I damn near fell off the couch when I read that Peppermint's brother was "Chocolate Drop."  And that nobody had adopted Peppermint because she was thin and sick-looking.

I'm pretty sure Peppermint was stirring around in my subconscious when I adopted the cute little injured kitten that nobody else wanted.  And we lived happily ever after.