A Kitten Named Love
Love:
His gloved fingers loosely grab the tin cup as he sits slumped over.
People pass, barley glancing at the tattered man before them, their faces uncaring.
He has no home, no duplex or even apartment to call his own. Tonight he occupies a large box behind a local pizzeria, which sometimes if he is lucky the employees take pity and hand him a sack of three day old pepperoni.
He rests his head along him arm, closing his wrinkled eyes before the rain comes. It bounces off his cardboard box fiercely and pools around his naked toes. A veteran for his country, he never thought his life legacy would be this, an empty box laying in an ally.
The night drags on with the raging storm, high winds, monstrous bolts of lighting and thunderous booms. Eventually the old man is awaken but not by the pounding rain but a purr. A kitten, merely a few months old has wondered into his lap taking refuge from the storm. Its orange and white fur drips as he shivers, yet his purr echos around the sagging brown walls. He sits upright and cradles the kitten, wondering why it didn’t run. Perhaps like himself the small animal only wants a home.
Its olive shaped eyes fixate on an empty bag of meat, its heart racing rapidly. The kitten is thin, appearing as though it has never ate. The war vet smiles and slides off his coat, he wraps the kitten gently then grabs his tin cup. Eagerly he shakes, panning for nickles and dimes. He washes windows even wipes away the grime. Never has he worked harder for $8.75 but tonight the man and kitten will eat from a bag that reads pedigree and to him that’s just fine. He has made a friend in the most unlikely of places and to him in the most needy of circumstances. Tomorrow the vet will rise and work the cruel streets of New York. He will face ridicule, people glaring in disgust, but he will gladly face it all to provide for his kitten he named Love.
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