The Continuing Adventures of a Wayward Meerkat Kit
“Food experts say you should eat lots of different coloured vegetables to get all the different vitamins. Therefore hundreds and thousands are even better for you than vegetables.” – Meerkat Kit
Fairy bread anyone? (ed.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_bread
One fine November day, I was sitting at the table minding my own business when Kit did his best to burst into the room (a rather Herculean feat given his size compared to the size of the door!) He righted himself, assumed a dignified pose, and declared that I was in Big Trouble! With him.
“It has been brought to my attention,” he said haughtily, “That the name Kit just means ‘baby meerkat.’ Firstly, I am nearly four years old; I ought to be just Meerkat by now! And thirdly [his numbers go a bit random when he gets excited], why couldn’t you be bothered to think of a proper name for me?! Parents are supposed to have arguments about what to call their kids. You did when we were naming your cactus! You love that Spike Milligan more than you love me!” He started sobbing theatrically into his paw.
“Oh dear! Poor Kitten,” I said soothingly. “You had better sit down and let me tell you the real story behind your name.”
“It had better be good! And don’t call me Kitten,” he sniffed grudgingly. So I began.
“Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a girl named Kathleen. She had five brothers (poor thing). Her mother thought that Kathleen was the most beautiful girls’ name in the whole world, so she bestowed that name upon her only daughter.
But Kathleen disagreed. She thought it sounded indecisive, like a dithering halfwit of a name that wanted to be Katherine, but halfway through changed its mind to Eileen. She didn’t like it at all. By the time she was a teenager, she had begun to insist on being called, Kit.
When Kit grew up she had a daughter, who she named Karen. Karen is my mother. So that means that Kit was?”
“Your great-great-big-aunty-twenty-oneteen-times-removed on your mother’s best side?” Kit guessed.
“Close!” I said kindly, “Kit was…. my grandmother!”
“That’s what I meant,” said Kit.
“She died a few years before you were born at the ripe old age of 99 and three quarters (a fact which would have irritated her a great deal, had she not been dead). But I loved her very much, and I thought it would be an honour for you to be named after her.”
“Hmph!” said Kit. “You named me after a girl!” And he stomped off to sulk.
I called after him “Aren’t you lucky we didn’t name you Kathleen?”
Recently, Kit had a minor mishap, which he would later insist was a Major Calamity. This caused him to take to his bed for…oh, I don’t know; it must have been at least an hour, which demonstrates what a Serious Injury he sustained.
His Father and I had been unpacking from a recent hiking trip, which Kit had accompanied us on (but that is another story). Kit was ‘helping.’ [Kit has just informed me that he knows exactly what I mean by ‘helping,’ and he was in fact helping by spreading out everything all over the floor to enable us to see exactly what we had to put away. Thank you, Kit.]
When you are carrying everything that you need for several days, it is important that it is well secured as you walk. Otherwise, you can end up hiking a Very Long Way in the wrong direction, desperately seeking some Important Item that fell from a pocket unnoticed (such as a Very Angry stuffed meerkat). Over the ages, there have been many wonderful inventions designed to fasten things in place, including buttons, zips, domes and chewing gum.
As we were unpacking, we were treated to a sustained and piercing squeak of the sort of volume guaranteed to give you tinnitus for a week. Kit had discovered another invention designed to fasten things in place, and boy was it fastening things in place all over him! The poor Furry Little Fellow had discovered the velcro on my jacket, and he was as stuck as I was last week when I tried on a pair of skinny jeans!
So, His Dad and I spent the next half hour gently extricating him. Kit spent the entire time barking detailed instructions, telling us precisely how we were doing it wrong, and squeaking, “Ow! You’re hurting me!” Other than that, he was a joy to be around.
Afterwards, having lost a little fur, Kit took to his bed. It turns out he spent that time using my phone to surf the internet. He thought velcro was such a dumb idea that he decided to research why some numb-nuts had invented it in the first place. He later presented us with the following offering, his very first poem!
On Velcro
Designed to keep things in place
in outer space.
It is shit.
Everything sticks to it.
It should all go back to outer space
and get off of my face.
“What a clever poem!” I said.
“But, surely velcro has its uses,” I said.
“…of which, none currently spring to mind,” I added.
“I can think of a few,” said Kit, “And I never want to do any of them ever again!”
“Why does that tree have a beard?”
“Is it a hipster?”
The whole family was reading in the living room, when Kit asked us, “Why do people chop up plants to give other people?”
“You mean like firewood or more like salad?” His Dad asked him.
Kit looked pensive, “No, the dead bits have flowers on. And then they don’t even eat them; they just stare at them with a soppy smile for a week, and then throw them away.”
“They’re not supposed to be dead,” I explained.
Kit was bemused, “But they’re chopped up!” he exclaimed, “I might only be three and a half, but I know that when you chop things up, they get pretty dead!”
His Dad interjected, “They’re considered a nice romantic gift, Kit.”
“But why do they kill the flowers before they give them to you. You can get pot plants with flowers on! Who wants a bunch of corpses?” He looked to us for answers. Getting none, he continued his rant.
“It’s like…it’s like a killer giving away bits of people as presents. I like you so much, here’s a bunch of thumbs! How is that romantic?!”
“Actually I agree with you, Kit,” I laughed. “I would much rather be given a living plant. Especially a cactus. They’re really cool; I’ll show you one some time.” At this point in time, I don’t believe Kit had ever seen a cactus.
Several months had passed, when one day My Lovely Partner surprised me with….a cactus! I recognise that there are a number of ways for this to occur that would probably not be a Most Enjoyable Experience. Indeed, my own sister was once surprised by a cactus; it left her quite traumatised. However, in this instance it was actually a Rather Pleasant Surprise.
Later that same day, I was sitting admiring my prickly new companion, when Kit came barrelling in. He stopped dead in his tracks and did a double take.
“Yikes!” he squeaked, “That is one Scary-looking Cucumber!”
“It’s a cactus, Kit. Your Dad gave me a cactus,” I explained.
“I think I had a nightmare with one of those in it,” he said.
Approaching cautiously, he asked, “Is it tame?”
“Absolutely,” I assured him, “It’s just a plant. Come and help us choose a name for him.”
So we pondered, and we mused, and we deliberated. There was arguing, and sulking and raising of voices (and that was just the grown-ups). But at length, we agreed on a name befitting this, frankly, absurd-looking plant. A name to honour a great comic and writer, that also suits our scary little cucumber perfectly.
“Are people from Myanmar called Myanmartians?”
A few months ago, I was trying on lingerie in front of the bathroom mirror (for Valentine’s Day). I was unaware that three and a half year old Kit was within earshot. Being now in my middle years, to put it delicately, everything is not where it used to be. Nonetheless, I was attempting to titillate, not terrify!
I muttered under my breath, “Oh my gosh! I look a bit heavy.”
Kit peered around the door and asked, “What’s a heifer?”
I immediately corrected him, “I said heavy! I said, Oh my gosh! I look a bit heavy.”
“You did not!” he said indignantly, “You said, Oh my god! I look like a heifer! I heard you. So what’s a heifer, then?”
I sighed and replied, “It’s a big fat cow.”
He eyed me appraisingly.
“Then you don’t look like a heifer,” he said.
“Thank you, Kit.”
“Because, they have brown eyes, and yours are blue.”
“??!”
“And they don’t wear fancy undies. I saw all those cows in that great big, enormous, huge field one time. They stretched as far as the eye could see; it must have been most of the cows in the whole world” he exaggerated.
“When did you see them?” I asked.
“When you took me down to the Funny Farm, and we drove past them on the way” he explained.
I suppressed a laugh. “Kit! It’s called Strange Farm. Strange is my friend’s surname.”
“Well I was close!” he said, “Funny means strange.”
“True. But Funny Farm means something else.”
“Oh! I nearly forgot,” he interrupted, “You don’t look like a heifer because you’re not fat.” He peered at me intently for a few seconds.
“You’re wearing you’re Too Little, Too Late Face” he announced. “Dad warned me about that.” And he quickly scampered out the door.
“If you call me Kitten one more time, I may have to hurt you.”
On Good Friday, as I was preparing breakfast, Kit asked, “Are we having those Angry Hot Buns, like we had last year?”
“They’re called Hot Cross Buns!” I laughed.
“Angry Hot Buns sounds like someone who is annoyed about getting sunburned in the nether-regions. And yes, we are.”
“Can you even get sunburned in the nether-regions?” he asked. “I thought it was so cold that it sometimes snows there.”
It has certainly never snowed on my nether-regions! I mean, what kind of idiot?!
…..The penny dropped as I realized that he was thinking of the Netherlands! So I explained to him that he had better remember the difference because Dutch people might not appreciate you comparing your bottom to their country!
Somewhat subdued, he asked if he could borrow my laptop to write it out ten times, so he would remember not to offend Dutch people. “Sure. Go ahead,” I said, and forgot all about it for two days.
Yesterday morning (Easter Sunday), I flipped my laptop open to discover that Kit had carefully written out the following ten times (bless him):
Rimemba not to iffend duch peepil.
I was pretty sure that, for all his good intentions, it hadn’t helped. So I quizzed him, “Kit, what is the name of the country we were talking about the other day?”
He pondered briefly, and proudly announced, “The Nether-regions!”
Sorry, Dutch readers! I promise he will have geography lessons when he is old enough.
Then he asked to borrow the laptop again to type out his first message to you all. And this is what it said:
ngwuert-uu1’jiWF GEMOEROIlo,ioyelgh nhfmon
He said you would understand…
I’m not so sure.
When I asked him what it said, he got all uppity, and said that the whole point of writing is so that you can read it, and can’t I read?
So, apparently if you can’t read that, you must be illiterate. Let’s just imagine it says:
A Very Happy Easter to you and yours with love from Meerkat Kit.
I think he would like that.