My Big Family. A Day of Tots

«Cuc-koo, dark! E240 is formaldehyde!»[11 - Formaldehyde is classified as a probable human carcinogen.] Peter explained, and chewing the sandwich, went to his room. Three latches were heard snapping in turn.

An iron sheet rumbled on the opposite side of the fence. Andrew and Seraphim climbed over. Seraphim was gnawing with effort on ice cream found in the freezer. The ice cream was so hard that it was possible to knock a stone with it and the stone would respond with a bang.

«Look at this one!» Andrew said with reproach. «He didn't go to school because his throat hurts!»

«But it really hurts! Ask Mama!» Seraphim said and both brothers glared at each other.

«Oh, adoptable kittens have arrived!» Papa Gavrilov said gladly, especially placing his hopes on Seraphim, who, in his fantastic poetic absentmindedness, would even be able to adopt ten pregnant cats smeared with green dye and plastered with modelling clay.

Seraphim and Andrew together with Alena and Kate repacked the kittens from the box to an old hat, went along the main street, and began to repeat plaintively, «Ple-e-ease take a kit-ten! Ple-e-ease take a kit-ten!»

The kittens got out of the hat, scrambled up their sleeves, and did not stop meowing. Each of the children had to take a kitten. Seraphim carried two simultaneously, and the kittens managed to cling to passers-by. Seraphim's whine «Ple-ease take a po-oor little kit-ten!» turned out to be the most pitiful. Therefore, people often approached him.

Alex followed Seraphim, but without a kitten, because he was constantly losing it and the rest got sick of that. The snow was beginning to melt. It seemed as though it would not stay till evening. Alex scooped the snow from the fence, shaped it into snowballs, and threw them high above his head to see what they would fall on. The third snowball plopped on a taxi. The driver pretended to chase after Alex, who hastily hid behind Andrew.

«You're acting erratically! You don't know what your hands will do in the next minute!» said Andrew.

«Not true! I know!»

«Yes? And what are they doing right now? Well, tell me! Don't look with your eyes!»

Not heeding, Alex stared incredulously at his hands and discovered in surprise that they had picked up a rusty bolt from the asphalt and were trying to twist the nut from it.

«Please take a kitten!» Alena shouted and burst out laughing, because snow had fallen from a tree into her mouth. Alex, noticing that snow was falling from the trees, began to run forward and hit the branches with a stick.

Despite all efforts, the adoption of kittens went poorly. Most passers-by were either not interested in the kittens at all or said something like, «Should offer in the summer!» All the same, every five minutes some compassionate auntie would pop out from somewhere, press a kitten to her chest, and start to aah, «Children! Ah! Kittens for adoption! How charming! This is a boy! If it were a girl, I would take it!»

«We have a girl!» Kate declared and beckoned Alena with the next kitten.

The compassionate auntie tensed up a little and took the kitten no longer with such enthusiasm, «Oh! If the girl was lighter, this one has a dark stripe!» she said hurriedly.

«We also have a lighter one! Seraphim, bring yours!» Andrew said in a dull voice, he liked to bring every situation to a logical conclusion.

The compassionate auntie felt cornered. «What if they're sick?» she said, hastily looking for an argument to refuse.

«Then you show the vet!» Andrew suggested.

«No, no! They're too young! They'll die! If they were older, then yes!» the auntie said and ran away cowardly.

The children wandered along the sea for about two hours and began to lose faith in their lucky star. But here they gradually began to get lucky. The first kitten was taken by an old lady selling seashells. Moreover, she took it as if instantly, when they had already walked past and did not even whine «please take a kitten!»

«Look at you! Yelling! A boy? Come here, boy!» she said and, after glancing under the kitten's tail, slipped it into a bag and gave Seraphim a covered seashell. «You'll make an ashtray!» she said.

Seraphim stood in confusion with the shell in his hand. «But I don't smoke…» he began.

«He does, he does!» Kate hastily said, dragging him by the sleeve. «You have to think! If you don't need the shell, give it to me!»

The second kitten was taken by a gloomy saleslady from a store. Kate thought for the first second that she was approaching to kick them out. The third kitten was taken by a police trainee to give to his girlfriend. The trainee said that it was all the same to him whether it was a boy or a girl, because he could not stand cats himself.

«So it's a sacrifice in the name of love? How nice!» Kate said.

The trainee looked at her rather sourly. «Just tie a bow on it for me!» he demanded.

«Where do I get ribbon? Ah, here!» Kate instantly pulled an elastic band with a butterfly off Alena, and the kitten was decorated with colourful wings. It was no worse than ribbon.

Children on the playground wanted to take the fourth and fifth kittens, but Kate did not let them until they called their parents. As a result, one was allowed, but the other was not. The one who was allowed already had two cats at home, but the other, not allowed, did not even have a cockroach in a jar. So the fifth kitten was given near the sea to three cheerful uncles returning from a cafe after a birthday. The uncles said that they were from Krasnodar and that there were «actually no» cats there.

These Krasnodar uncles triggered great suspicion in Kate, and she made them swear ten times that they would not throw out the kitten. «Now someone is cheerful, but tomorrow he'll be very unhappy! And you'll chuck the kitty somewhere!» she said reproachfully, to which the uncles resentfully replied that they were not animals, that they were in fact artists and would not chuck the kitty anywhere.

The artists took the kitten at the area by the large fountain. The fountain had not worked since the end of September, but it still had unfrozen water at the bottom. In summer a large pond turtle swam in the fountain and a special platform was built so that it could get out and bask in the sun. And now Alex, for some unknown reason having climbed into the fountain, discovered that no one would get the turtle from the fountain to take it to warmth, and it was hiding between the upper layer of the boards of the platform and its base. Because, probably, it had been forgotten, and it never occurred to anyone to put a hand between the boards and check if there was anything there. But Alex came, because he generally put his hands everywhere.

«Get out of the fountain, genius! You got your legs wet! Grandma will kill me at home!» Kate yelled.

«She'll kill me,» said Alena.

«No, she won't. She'll kill me, because she knows that I'm the oldest,» Kate said modestly.

Alex got out of the fountain with the turtle in his hands. The turtle did not show signs of life. Its paws and head were hidden inside the shell.

«It's dead! Frozen!» said Andrew.

«No, it's in hibernation,» Kate argued.

«Let's poke it with a nail so it'll wake up!» Alex suggested.

«I'll poke you!» Kate said, and taking the turtle away him, put it inside her jacket. The turtle was about the size of a salad bowl and quite heavy.

Chilled but pleased, they returned home with a pond turtle and a whining Alex, who, besides getting his legs wet, managed to lose his hat somewhere. It was good that Grandma and Great-Grandma had not yet returned and only Papa and Mama were home.

«They let me get chilled! My hat was lost, and now they won't let me touch the turtle, which I found!» Alex was indignant.

«Did you try zipping up your jacket? By the way, you had a hood!» Mama said.

«Oh! I didn't think of it!» Alex suddenly realized.

«What didn't you think of? Zipping up the jacket? Or the hood?» Judging by Alex's confused look, he had thought of neither.

«Well, where are the kittens?» Papa asked. «Adopted?»

Kate nodded her head. «Done!» she said. «Now I know everything! Kittens can only be adopted by those who already have cats! And a kind or unkind person in appearance means absolutely nothing!»

Chapter Five

Chicha the Monkey

Mama, I will not give you to anyone! Not even to you!

    Costa