A Selection Box: A Wondrous Collection of Short Stories by M. J. Copeland - HTML preview

Every day, William the ginger cat would sit and wait patiently on the windowsill. He could not quite understand why his master did not want him in the house anymore, especially now that the evenings were drawing in darker, and the nights were getting colder. Eating scraps of food and sleeping underneath cars became a place of shelter from the cold night winds. William looked over to his house and could see the front door had been left wide open. He ran as fast as he could before it closed but just as William went to take a step in the doorway, the master put a foot in the way of the door and stopped him in his tracks. 

“I don't want you anymore cat, find somebody else to feed you!” was the reply in a snappish tone before closing the door. William did not have anywhere else to go, so he continued to sit on the windowsill of his master’s house.

It was not until one late afternoon, as the snow began to fall from the skies and the temperature became freezing cold. William’s only chance of survival was to find warm shelter. He tried sitting on the windowsills of other houses, hoping a person would be kind enough to give him refuge in their home; but they did not want a cat. Poor William felt so cold and lonely he did not care anymore. He curled himself up into a ball and fell to sleep on his master’s snow-covered pathway.

After ten or so minutes into his sleep, a robin flew down from the gatepost and started to peck at William’s nose to try and wake him from his sleep. The robin would not stop chirping and whistling until William followed him. The robin took William and led him across the park and into a graveyard where an elderly lady was laying flowers upon a grave.

“What a pretty cat you are,” said the lady smoothing William’s fur with her hand. 

“Walking around in a graveyard all by yourself without a collar on.”

William loved the attention so much he rubbed his fur against the lady’s legs. The elderly lady looked at William and mused…

“It is no need for someone to be on their own,

When there are cats like you that need a good home.

I know you cannot speak but I know you can hear,

And that is all I want from a cat so dear.

So why not come home and live with me,

Where I will give you some of my delicious tea.

And if you do not mind, I’d like to call you William,

After my husband who was one in a million.”