Buttons did not care to be held one
little bit. As a kitten, his mother told him his best course of
action when the humans picked him up was to go to his happy place.
Buttons tried, but he quickly learned that though his instincts were
to struggle, to bite and claw and scratch and squirm, the humans
would not put him down. How was he ever to get to his happy place?
“Silly buttons,” his mother would
say. “Your happy place isn't a real place, but a state of mind.”
At three he learned that his mother was
wrong. His happy place wasn't a state of mind at all, but a real
place in a parallel world. A brown place. Brown like the dirt he
loved to play in, brown like the rug the humans wouldn't let him pee
on, brown like his favorite kibble.
From then on, when the humans picked
him up, he would stare into the distance and let the Brown Place wash
over him and take him away, and would only return when he felt quite
certain they had given up searching for him and had opened a nice
comfy book for him to sit on.
- Originally mailed to A. Navoy in Jackson, Mississippi
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