Chun Pu

We have a new addition to the household. She is small, but she sure is a handful!

Erik and I were coming home from a dinner out with friends. It was just getting dark as we stopped at the local market to pick up some fruit for our long bus ride the next day. You can never count on the “lunch and snacks” the bus company promises, so we are always sure to carry a few snacks ourselves.

I hopped off the back of the motorbike as Erik wheeled it to a stop in the loose dirt and erupted a cloud of dust. I removed my helmet and walked toward the shamble-shack with its frayed canvas awning sloping like a slack jaw. I bowed my head to enter the cover and glanced up at the dimly lit rows of fruit. The shelves the fruit lay on come to about chest high, each level displayed a different fruit. Pineapples with spiky hair lay next to dragon fruit, its green –tipped, purple leaves sprawled outward toward the piles of different sized oranges. I am sure that the oranges are all different varieties but can never be communicated past anything but, “orange.” Mangosteens resembling overgrown blueberries with hard shells nestled with the spiky, green-red hairs of rambutans. I scanned the colors to find our apples.

Through the small opening between the shelves came a boy about seventeen from the shadows behind. Much taller than me he stooped under the canopy and held a thin plastic bag open for me to put my fruit into. I smiled at him and leaned over awkwardly to reach for the apples in their pink Styrofoam netting. Picking a few, I rolled them in my hands to check for firmness and bruising. Happy with the four I found I nodded to him to acknowledge that that was all. “Tao rai, ka. See apple, ka. See-sip baht?” (“How much? Four apples. Forty Baht?”) I asked as I reached for my wallet. He turned behind him to grab a calculator and I saw a small shadow dart behind the stall. “Oh, lek meow.” (“Oh, small cat.” As I don’t know the word for kitten or baby.) He furrowed his brow at me and cocked his head to one side. I pointed to the where the shadow had been, “Lek meow.”

An older boy about my age came from behind the other. He smiled at me and leaned down into the darkness. He returned and held a tiny, little mound of fur in his outstretched hand. Two green eyes peered at me as he shoved the warm body into my already full hands. Struggling to balance the bag of apples and to not drop the tiny body, I lowered one shoulder and slid the bag onto my right arm. A little calico cat purred at me as I scratched under her chin and held her up to the sky in my left hand. She just sat, purring away with her little back legs outstretched from beneath her white belly, toes spread in the cool air. She was the chillest little kitten ever.

I smiled at her as I handed her back to the fruit boys. “For you.” he said with his hands up in refusal.
“For me? No, no.” I answered him trying to push the kitten into his hands.
“For you. Yes!”
“For me?” I studied the creature. She looked so content just slumped in my hand. She looked at me and blinked her green eyes lazily. “Erik, I think we have a cat.” I called to him over my shoulder.
“What?” He said as he walked toward me.

The mother cat appeared from under the rows of striped watermelons and I put the kitten down to her. The kitten crawled on the mother and they playfully batted at each other. They rolled onto their stomachs and nipped at the other’s ear. Erik and I backed away to observe and discussed the situation- were we really going to take her? The kitten saw us and bounded toward where we were standing. She began to rub her head and small body against our legs and crisscrossed around our ankles. She dove into Erik’s hand as he leaned down to her. “Yeah, she’s a keeper.” We agreed.

I held her against my chest as we drove the rest of the way home.