Mrs. Pink's blooming kittens

1953 found me living in a small two bedroom house with a glassed in front porch in Champaign, Illinois.  My father worked in two places, a locked room in the basement and a place called the U of I.  I was not allowed to go into the first unless I was invited and I never saw the second until many years later (when he no longer worked there.)

One afternoon my parents brought home a cute little gray cat.  They said it's name was Pretty Soon.  I said we should call it Mrs. Pink, but my father pointed out that Mrs. Pink was a girl's name and we didn't know if our cat was a girl or a boy.  I asked when we would find out and he said, "Pretty Soon."  I thought it was sad that my cat had to have such a silly name because my parents weren't smart enough to tell a girl from a boy, but I let it go.

One morning, as I sat eating oatmeal, my mother pointed out the window.  Our yard was overflowing with cats!  "Pretty Soon is a girl."  She announced. It made sense to me.  Girls like to play a lot while my baby brother didn't do much more than lay in his crib and make funny sounds.  Then one day my father came home from the U of I and told me to come see what he found in his office downstairs in the basement.

My mother took my sister and I down and there, in a large box, was Pretty Soon and five fuzzy little kittens!  "Where did she get them?"  I wanted to know.  My mother said there was a field where kittens grew and mother cats could go there and pick out whatever babies they wanted.  From that day on I had my nose glued to the car window whenever we went anywhere.  I really wanted to find this place!

I think my first fantasy was finding this field and meandering through it, deciding which kitten I would pluck off the giant green leaves there, but a close runner up would be that I was going to grow up to be Mrs. Pink and live in a little white house with pink shutters and have a three year old little girl all my own.  Those were my ideals then, adorable three year old girls and cuddly kittens.

I lived in the center of so much love that I never even dreamed of being anyone except me. My dream was to live in my perfect little house with a perfect little girl just like me and be just like my Daddy.

But then I was three.