The Kitten Committee.

So, Nat saved a kitten yesterday.

He was waiting for the bus home from school, when a small but frantic mewling was suddenly separated out from the litany of sounds surrounding him; cars whooshing by, trees swishing in the wind, other would-be passengers rustling through their bookbags. He heard it before he saw it, and headed across to the median strip, where the small but desperate noises were coming from. A girl followed him over.
"Is there a cat up there?" she asked, having heard the panicked cries as well.

I guess the little guy was mewing all night long, as a third girl stated she had heard it the night before. Aww! The kitten in question was up about 20 feet in the tree. It was a teeny black-and-white mottled number, with a cute little black face and hazel eyes, according to Nat, who managed to hoist one of the girls up into the tree. She wrangled the tiny feline off of the branch, then gingerly handed the furry ball down to Nat, where the mewling cries immediately picked up their pace. He passed it off to the waiting arms of the third girl, who decided she was taking him home for the afternoon, promising she would put up "Found" posters the next day.

Shucks! Glad that disaster was avoided. Fire department? Who needs 'em. We have The Kitten Committee.
(no, really- we do need them. just joshin', guys and gals!)

Speaking of firemen, did anybody else here have one of those decals on their windows when they were little- the silvery, oval-shaped one that had a fireman carrying a child on it? (Wish i could find an image for you, but nothin' doin'.) Now that i look back on it, we had one on the kids' bedroom window in our apartment, but there was also one prominently displayed in the front window of the large house my best friend lived in, which was also a daycare during daylight hours. So they must have been some kind of sign for the firefighters, to know that there were possibly children inside? Yowsers. I remember staring at that thing at night as i fell asleep. It was always backlit from a streetlight on nearby Shattuck Avenue, and for some reason it always made me feel better. How would i have slept without it?