The Painted Ponies of Partequineus and The Summer of the Kittens by Peter H. Riddle

heading for the gate, and we knew if it went under the fence we wouldn’t be able to catch it.
    Catch it? I guess that was what I was thinking about.
    The gravel is kind of rough at the end of the street, more like big stones, and it was hard to push Jimmy’s chair without bouncing him around a lot, so I had to slow down. Anyway, by the time we got to the gate the cat was gone, disappeared among all the weeds and bushes that were pretty well leafed out after all the rain we’ve had. We tried calling it, but I guess it was scared of us and wouldn’t come out. I thought about climbing the fence - I’ve done it before, lots of times, even though I’m not supposed to - but since Jimmy couldn’t come with me, I decided not to.
    â€œGuess the cat doesn’t like people,” Jimmy said.
    â€œGuess not.”
    â€œAre you sure it came out of that car?”
    â€œI think so. I’ve never seen it around here before.”
    â€œHow come they left it here, then?”
    â€œDon’t know.”
    We stood and watched for a few minutes, or I stood and Jimmy sat, only the cat didn’t show up again. I thought about climbing up in my tree once more to see if I could spot it from way up high, and I thought about climbing the fence and trying to find it, and I thought about being a cat and just disappearing into the bushes and doing whatever cats do when they’re off on their own and don’t want to have anything to do with people. I think I might like that.
    In the end I just pushed Jimmy’s wheelchair off the stones and onto the sidewalk, and he grabbed for the rims on the wheels and pushed real hard so I had to let go. But he wasn’t mad at me. He was just showing me he didn’t need me any more. He said goodbye, and I stood and watched him roll up the street to go home, all alone.
    I’m all alone, too, but in a different way.
    I’ve never had a cat. I’ve never had any kind of pet, ’cause my Dad thinks they’re too much trouble. I’m pretty sure my Dad thinks I’m too much trouble, too.
    After Jimmy left, I walked back to the gate across the tracks and stretched my hands up real high and clung to the chain links and sort of stretched myself, getting bigger and bigger and bigger until I was so tall I could see all the way across the dykes to Port Williams and all the way across the Bay of Fundy to New Brunswick and all the way across Canada to Vancouver. And Jimmy flew by in his airplane, and he was standing up in the cockpit on two strong legs and laughing, and the sun rose up in the sky and followed him like it always did, right across the whole big country.
    He was so happy.
    It was just Mom and me for supper, ’cause Dad was off at some meeting at the university, at least that’s what Mom said, although I think she was just covering up for him, like she always does when she thinks I don’t know what’s going on with him. Afterward I took some of the ground beef that was left over after we ate and stuck it in a napkin and took it outside.  I walked down to the dyke gate and called for the cat, you know, like, “Here, kitty, kitty,” ’cause I didn’t know the cat’s name. If it even had a name, that is.
    Anyway, it didn’t come. I sat there for the longest time until it started to get dark, and when I heard my mother calling me I left the napkin on the ground and went home. I figured something would eat the meat, a rat or a squirrel or a raccoon, maybe. But secretly I believed it would be the cat who would come out of the bushes as soon as I was in the house, and that it would know I was the one who remembered to feed it.

May 17 th
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    Hey, Diary!
    School was really boring today. It rained in the morning so we couldn’t go outside for recess, and today wasn’t an assembly day, and Jimmy wasn’t there. He misses a lot of school on account of his spina bifida, but he keeps up with his