Category Archives: Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap

Baby Wins the Internet this Month

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Sometimes the Internet gets it right. Watch this, y’all.

This is Baby. She was owner surrendered at age 18 to our local shelter. Amy, an independent cat rescuer, sent a picture of her out on FB and asked for help. Appalachian Feline Friends (the rescue I work with) said to pull her the next day and we’d take her. All accomplished with ease and grace.

The next day, Erin from AFF posted in a closed cat group online that while she understood sometimes cat parents had no good choices, she was incensed at Baby being taken to the shelter so late in life. Several people agreed.*

One of those who agreed was a lady named Laura, who used to live in this area but since moved to Raleigh, NC. Laura got on her own FB timeline and shared a video of Baby exploring her temporary digs at our bookstore, and again railed against an 18-year-old cat ending up at a shelter.

Meanwhile, Appalachian Feline Friends posted Baby’s video and attracted the attention of the lovely Jeff and Christina, also residents of Raleigh. Christina and Jeff adore eldercats and had just lost two of their own. They messaged to ask about Baby, and within the week AFF volunteer Maria Jane was meeting Christina in Boone to deliver Baby to her new furrever home.

All very nice, but wait for the denouement. Laura had meanwhile decided she was going to tell friends of hers about Baby, since they had recently lost their cats. She showed up at Christina and Jeff’s for a pre-arranged dinner, sat down on the sofa and started to tell the story….

….and Baby sauntered past.

Recognizing her from the video, Laura sat, mouth agape, as Christina said, “Go on, what cat?”

By the time the friends had sorted out what happened, Baby had walked back through, given Laura the once-over, and declared she could stay. It’s Baby’s house now. Here she is with a food flight, sampling so Christina and Jeff can record her preferences. Her new housekeeping staff are eager to make sure Baby’s final years are golden ones.

*The lady who surrendered Baby has been in touch to scream about the family getting dragged through the mud on Facebook. I don’t think that happened, but if it did, AFF didn’t do it. Actions have consequences. We recognize that sometimes people can’t help the tough choices they have to make and we’ve seen too much of poverty mixed with love to ever judge someone for that. We’ve also seen plenty of times when someone chose convenience over caring and then got embarrassed for it. We’re not saying which one this looks like, just saying Baby won the Internet this month.

The Monday Book: NIGHT JOURNEY by Kathryn Lasky

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It stands to reason that, having cleaned out the children’s room, I would have picked up a book or two to read for fun.

What’s really cool is when you start reading, and suddenly you remember a line from the book just before you read it, and you quote it as you read along. Which is how I found out I’d read this book a long, long time ago.

I picked up The Night Journey not because I remembered reading it, but mostly because it had a Samovar on front, and because Trina Schart Hyman illustrated it. She’s one of my two most favorite children’s book illustrators. LOVE her work.

Journey describes a great-grandmother and grandchild reconstructing the elder woman’s escape from pogrom-filled Russia when she was the age of the child to whom she is now telling the story. Filled with finely-drawn characters like Aunt Ghisa (a little bitterness from the unmarried sister who still loves her niece) and Wolf, the tormented loner who escaped an earlier Cossack raid at a cost higher than life. When Rache is first told her great-grandmother’s story, so intense is Wolf’s part in it that she writes it in a letter to be opened on Rache’s eighteenth birthday. The letter being opened is the culmination of the story, and it is intensely bittersweet.

Children’s books aren’t so layered and deep these day, methinks. The dismantling of the Samovar so the family can sneak it out with then, and the protection of the gold coins the family carries, run through the larger historic story like gold threads. It is a very satisfying read.

And fast. Which is fun sometimes, when you just want to spend two nights living someone else’s life from the safety of your pillow.