My Big Family. A Day of Tots

First-grader Alex circled around the kitchen and, pestering everyone, asked them to find his notebooks.

«Notebooks for lazy Alex! Where are you? Hello!» Kate summoned, arms still crossed on her chest. Alex apprehensively looked sideways at her and fell silent.

Alena hopped along the hallway and, hastily tossing books into her backpack, moaned, «Oh! We have work today! Give me a hundred roubles for modeling clay!»

«Your were given some yesterday!» Kate said.

«Oh! I spent it! First, forty on a chocolate bar, and then there wasn't much left and I decided to spend…»

Peter's head popped out of the bathroom. It turned out he heard everything perfectly. «Give me one and a half million for modeling clay! And three more for an eraser! But then it's not enough for the new iPhone!» he said in a squeaky voice.

They threw a towel at Peter and his head hid. In the bathroom, something laughed terribly, a chair dropped, and the water was turned on. Peter usually went to school a minute before the bell and took with him a maximum of one notebook, which he tucked under his belt.

The morning was overcast. Costa, confusing words, called such a morning «overpass.» The sky was clearly preparing for something spectacular, but what exactly was still unclear. Clouds were moving like small flocks, gradually gathering into one very large cloud.

«I also want to annoy like everyone else!» Kate grumbled, waving the bag with her indoor shoes. «Give me a T-shirt! Not that one! Pour me some tea! Not that tea!»

«Then you can't grumble at all and be always right!» said Vicky.

Kate pondered. «In fact, yes!» she acknowledged. «Okay, then I agree to stay the way I am.»

Kate returned from school at about two, right after Alex and Alena. She stood by the window. Outside the window, snow was falling in large flakes and settled on an evergreen shrub and equally on the green grass. Stool, Lad, and Tot sat in front of the bushes and, with their heads up, looked with bewilderment at the snowflakes on their noses. Stool whined in fright. Tot growled. Lad demonstrated philosophical calm.

«What went on in school!» said Kate. «Everyone ran from class!»

«And the teachers?»

«The teachers also ran. Everyone stood in the schoolyard and threw snow! Quite wild, as if they had never seen snow! And behind the fence there, incidentally, were the power guys!»

«What, did they break the windows with snowballs?» Mama was surprised, cutting out three-dimensional snowflakes for home decorations. She had already cut out about twenty snowflakes and each had its own shape. For the time being, it was all cut like ordinary paper, but then poof! – a momentary movement of the fingers and a snowflake opened in the air, becoming three-dimensional.

«No,» Kate acknowledged reluctantly. «But these power guys also dropped their work and built a snowman with a light bulb instead of a nose… They found a large light bulb somewhere, massive like a soccer ball! But by evening, all the same, everything melts!»

After standing a little longer at the window, Kate made her way to the closet to put away clean laundry. Not so long ago she discovered that the children's clothes got mixed up in the laundry and nothing could be found when needed. Therefore, it was much simpler not to sort the things according to their owners but label the drawers with a marker, and each would easily find their own there. Now on the drawers were large labels PANTS, SOCKS, SHIRTS, TIGHTS, SKIRTS.

This principle of sorting revealed more and more advantages each day, but at first this idea had many opponents. Alex especially resented strongly. «What, I'll be wearing girl tights?»

«You do have eyes, where yours are and where the girls' are,» Kate retorted.

«What, I'm supposed to think?»

«Really! Think! Your head won't fall off! Come on, show me, what tights do you have on now?»

But Alex did not show any tights and hastily fled, because he had on Alena's tights for the reason that he was too lazy to look for his own in the pile of clothing. Kate hurriedly scattered the dried clothes according to pants, shirts, skirts and, waving away Costa, who was hindering her with a T-shirt, returned to Mama.

Suddenly, the intercom started to screech. Once, twice, then a third time.

«Who was so mad there?» Kate asked with displeasure.

It turned out that it was Vicky, who came in breathless and red. «Kittens were dropped off there at the school! Five of them! In a box!» she informed them.

Papa Gavrilov tore himself away from the computer, where he was trying to unravel an entangled plot. «So, fine!» he showed appreciation. «A school is the most suitable place. Children finish classes, the grandmas come for them. If you try very hard, a grandma can be persuaded to take a kitten.»

Vicky was mysteriously silent, averting her eyes. Papa looked at her. «Just don't say that…» he began slowly.

Kate, rushing from the spot, ran to the gate in her slippers and returned with a box. «Here they are! All five are here!» she shouted.

«Take them back!» Papa demanded.

«No, no! They'll freeze!» Vicky and Kate shook their heads.

«They won't. They are nearly a month old!»

«If you were about a month old and they threw you into a box out in the snow?» Kate asked with such reproach that Papa Gavrilov understood: he was not getting away from the kittens.

«Fine!» he conceded. «Then feed them, and later go, walk along the street, and repeat pitifully, 'Please take a kitten!'»

«I'll make an online ad!» Kate proposed.

Papa shook his head. «No way! The kittens don't get adopted online. It's a lost cause. There they'll only repost, ooh and ah. But no one will take them.»

«How do they get adopted?» Kate asked.

«Kittens are adopted exclusively by way of a chance nudge!» Papa stated. «A person sees a kitten and he's caught before his logical thinking kicks in. That's all. There are no other ways.»

«I won't grovel!» Kate claimed.

«And I'm afraid of meeting any of my acquaintances!» Vicky added.

«Well then, you also have no love for the kittens. Also no desire to help them. Take them away in the box to the school and put them where you found them,» Papa shrugged.

«What if you take compassionate photos and put them on social media, huh?» Vicky asked hopelessly.

«Yeah! You hold a kitten by the scruff of the neck over a pot of boiling soup with the caption: You have twenty-four hours to save this wretch!» advised Peter, having come down the stairs from his room. Peter had The Brothers Karamazov [6 - The Brothers Karamazov (1880) is the last novel of Russian writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (1821-81), whose works explore human psychology in the troubled atmosphere of 19th-century Russia.] under his arm. He read a hundred pages of this book a day; in doing so, having read exactly a hundred pages, even if there were, say, ten lines to the end of the chapter, he would stop. Peter went to the fridge on his way. He looked into it and snorted loudly.

«Is the soul wandering about in pots?» Vicky asked.

«What's to wander here? No food! The grannies are strolling by the sea!» Peter said.

«There's plenty of food!» Kate contested. «There's simply no pleasing you!»

«Very funny!» Peter cut off a third of the loaf of bread on a slant, smeared it with ketchup, generously sprinkled chicken seasoning on top of the ketchup, looked at the composition of the seasoning, and licked his lips. «E260![7 - E260, acetic acid, regulates acidity when used as a food additive.] E283![8 - E283, potassium propionate, is used as a food preservative.] Natamycin![9 - Natamycin, E235, is a naturally occurring antifungal agent used as a food additive.] Diethyl bicarbonate![10 - There is no diethyl bicarbonate used in food, most bicarbonates are used as acidity regulators or anti-caking agents. There is also dimethyl dicarbonate used as a beverage preservative. Although there is diethyl carbonate, which is a solvent and has been proposed as a fuel additive.] I love it! Does anyone else want bicarbonate? Well, I offered!» he said and bit off a huge chunk.

«How can you eat this trash? I'd be sick!» Vicky asked, rolling her eyes.

«Really? Bet you wouldn't?» Peter suggested and again buried himself in the seasoning composition. «Ah, how sad! No E240! Without it, food isn't food!»

«What's E240?» Vicky asked.