The Quiet Cries

Some cries are loud.

Some are whispers.

Some are speech impediments.

Some run much deeper.

Some are quiet little girls in the back of the room.

But they’re all cries.

And someone hears.

This story is about one of them.

Twenty-six years ago, an animal control officer hurried across a parking lot, trying to outrun a driving rain. Passing the dumpster outside the Humane Society, she almost kept walking.

Almost.

But then she heard it – faint cry for help.

At first, she thought it was her imagination.

She held her breath as the rain pounded the pavement.

A gust of wind carried the sound to her again.

Yes. This time it was unmistakable.

The cry of a newborn.

The beam of her flashlight cut through the heavy rain, eventually landing on a small moving shape. There, behind the dumpster, tucked against the cold metal, was a tiny tabby – soaked, shivering, and furious at the rain.

Carefully scooping up the tiny ball of wet fur, she rushed the cat inside, dried it off, fed it, and eventually placed it in a cage with two other cats. Over the next six days, different cats were placed with the little tabby, but she couldn’t get along with any of them. Then finally, a sickly black kitten with a white tuft on its chest was placed inside the cage.

A relationship was born.

The next day was Adoption Saturday. A young married couple arrived hoping to adopt a dog. Fate smiled upon them that day. The dog they wanted had already been adopted, so they decided to look at the cats instead.

Even before they reached the cages, they heard the crying meows of the baby tabby.

It was as if she knew they were there.

The couple spent time looking at the many cats but were always drawn back to the one cage with the loud tabby and the quiet black kitten. When they asked to hold them, the officer handed the tabby to the man and the black kitten to the woman.

The tabby immediately climbed up, sat down on his head, made biscuits in his hair with her front paws, and continued meowing.

“She’s a real talker, that one,” the officer said. “Hasn’t stopped crying since I found her out in the rain behind the dumpster.”

The man pointed upward. “I want this one.”

The officer smiled. “No one wants her. She’s really different – talks too much.”

“I do. Now I’ll have someone to talk to when the wife’s away.”

“And I want this one,” the young woman said, holding the black kitten close. “I’ll nurse her back to health.”

“That’s good,” the officer replied. “No one ever wants a black cat.”

The two cats had found their forever home and were inseparable for the next twenty years.

They died a month apart.

They have been gone now for six years, and The Wife and I still miss them dearly.

Last Thursday, I was helping in the car rider line at the elementary school where I work as a kindergarten paraprofessional, and that morning, there was a driving rain.

Between our helping children out of their cars, a coworker told me about the cat she was about to adopt — a unique cat that no one ever wants because it’s so different.

“It’s a polydactyl cat,” she said, smiling. “One with six toes. I’m so excited.”

For the next thirty minutes, I thought about our talkative tabby named BC and how much joy she and her sister Presh had brought us. Two cats no one wanted because they were so different had found their forever home with a family who loved them just as they were.

By the time car rider line ended, the rain had stopped. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the six-toed cat no one wants. Using artistic license, the following story was finished by the end of the day.

***

The officer at the Humane Society handed the kitten to a little girl and said gently, almost apologetically, “She’s polydactyl. That means she has extra toes.”

The small white kitten with the pink nose climbed up the girl’s arm, settled on her shoulder, and gave a soft head-butt, purring contentedly. The girl smiled and gently held one tiny paw in her hand.

“I know.”

She slowly slipped off her shoes.

Six little pink toes wiggled on each of her feet as she looked back at the tiny paw she was holding.

“I like them.”

The cat meowed her approval.

The girl slipped her shoes back on and left with her parents, taking Poly the polydactyl cat to her new forever home.

The little girl wasn’t embarrassed.

She wasn’t proud.

She was simply comfortable.

When a child feels different, the difference can feel loud inside.

But when they feel loved enough…

secure enough…

steady enough…

the loudness softens.

Sometimes the very thing that makes us feel different is the thing that helps someone else recognize us.

Some differences don’t just brush against your life.

They sculpt it.

They influence how you listen.

How you observe.

How you interpret the cries of the world.

A long time ago, in a kindergarten classroom, a little boy was hard to understand because of a speech impediment.

He eventually grew into a man who learned how to communicate in ways other than the spoken word — through stories.

A man who listens for the quiet cries.