“Come on, kids. We have a zillion things to do.” Mrs. Kidd hugged Ramona and said, “I thank you, Clawed thanks you, we all thank you. Oh—and don’t forget to brush him every day. That way he won’t throw up so many hair balls.”
“You’re welcome,” said Ramona with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. She disliked the smell of canned cat food, and she did not want to think about hair balls.
Jeremy bent over to stroke Clawed. “So long, you old rascal. I’ll miss you.” Clawed rubbed against Jeremy’s legs, and the family departed with the carrier, leaving Ramona in charge of the cat.
“Nice kitty.” Ramona tried to mean it. Clawed paused in licking his paw to look at her. Then he continued washing as if he did not care to associate with her.
“Ramona, take the litter box to the basement.” Mrs. Quimby spoke in a brisk, no-nonsense voice. Ramona knew she had no choice but to do as she was told. When she returned, Beezus was holding Roberta and saying, “See the kitty? See the nice kitty?” Roberta’s thoughts did not show. She had not made up her mind about Clawed, who ignored everything but his own paw and fur.
“You might put out some food and water for him so he will feel more at home,” suggested Ramona’s mother.
Ramona spread newspapers on the floor in the corner of the kitchen, set out Clawed’s dishes, and with the electric can opener opened a can of Puss-puddy. Pee-yew.
One whiff and she tried not to breathe. Clawed, recognizing the sound of a can opener, came running to investigate. “There, Your Royal Highness.” Ramona spoke crossly. Clawed chose to ignore her. She tried to make up for speaking so disagreeably by stroking him, but Clawed merely turned his head long enough to give her a look that said, You are not my friend. After eating, he explored the house before he curled up in a hole in his kitty condo and stared balefully out at the Quimbys’ living room. Then he went to sleep.
Later that evening Mrs. Quimby said to Ramona, “Bedtime for your boarder. You’d better shut him in the basement.”
Clawed had different ideas. “Here, kitty, kitty,” coaxed Ramona. Clawed glared from the hole in the post.
“Come on, puss-puss,” wheedled Beezus, trying to help. After all, she really liked cats. Clawed ignored her, his chin still resting on his paws.
Mrs. Quimby reached into the hole and stroked the cat’s head. “Good kitty,” she whispered. Clawed closed his eyes.
“I’ll show you how to deal with an old tomcat.” Mr. Quimby picked up the carpeted post, turned it on its side, and dumped Clawed onto the carpet. “Catch him!” he directed.
Ramona tackled Clawed and picked him up. Clawed went limp. “Nice kitty-cat,” she said, trying to make up for the indignity of his being dumped. He was heavier than she expected.
Mr. Quimby scratched Clawed’s ear. “Into the basement, old boy,” he said.
Ramona lugged the cat to the basement door, set him down on the top step, and closed the door quickly. She thought better of this unkindness, opened the door a crack, and said, “Nighty-night, Clawed.”
The cat was silent. He was silent, that is, until the family was in bed asleep. He then began to protest. He yowled at the basement door, he meowed pitifully, and yowled some more. Except for Roberta, who always slept soundly, the whole family was awake.
“Ramona,” Mr. Quimby called out. “Do something about that cat.”
“What am I supposed to do?” asked Ramona, only half-awake.
“Just cope,” said her father. This annoyed Ramona. Now that she was in the fourth grade, her parents often told her to cope when she wanted help.
Without bothering with slippers, she stumbled sleepily down the hall, faintly illuminated by the tiny green light on the electric toothbrush in the bathroom. The kitchen linoleum felt cold to her feet as she opened the basement door. “Come on, you old cat,” she said, and felt Clawed brush against her nightgown. “See if I care what you do.”
What Clawed did was sleep on the living room couch. He had won. In the morning, when the Quimbys were getting out of bed, he yawned, stretched, went to his water dish, decided he didn’t care for it, strolled into the bathroom, and drank out of the toilet. “You old scoundrel,” muttered Mr. Quimby through the sound of his electric razor.
Now that Clawed had made it clear to the family that he was going to set the rules for his treatment, he turned into a mostly agreeable cat, and as Ramona had predicted, Roberta was fascinated by a creature smaller than she was. She crawled after him, patted his fur, squealed with pleasure. Clawed did not seem to mind. If she was too rough or pulled his tail, he simply retired to the hole in his kitty condo.
Ramona, who had hoped someone would go with her to the park so she could work on a new set of calluses, now felt her life was full of chores. She washed Clawed’s dish, changed his water even though he drank from the toilet, served his meals, brushed his hair off the couch, brushed Clawed himself so he wouldn’t shed so much, watched him when Roberta was crawling around on the floor. She began to look forward to Clawed’s going home.
Then late one afternoon when Beezus was at Abby’s house and Ramona was sitting on the floor keeping one eye on Roberta and Clawed and her other eye on a book, Mrs. Quimby said, “Do you think you could watch Roberta while I drive over and pick up Beezus? I’ll only be gone a few minutes.”
“Sure, Mom.” Ramona felt a ripple of pleasure. She had been promoted from cat-sitter to baby-sitter. She was proud that her mother finally trusted her.
“You’re sure?” asked Mrs. Quimby.
“Of course I’m sure. I watch her all the time,” said Ramona, and added words she had heard Beezus speak so often. “Mom, you worry too much.”
“That’s what mothers are for,” said Mrs. Quimby as she went out the door.
“Now, you be a good girl,” Ramona instructed her baby sister, who was sitting on the floor holding her precious little blanket against her face.
Roberta looked agreeable to being a good girl. She pulled a magazine off the coffee table, tearing the cover off as it fell to the carpet. “E-e-e,” squealed Roberta, so delighted with her accomplishment she dropped her blanket. With both hands she rumpled a few pages, a sound that disturbed Clawed, who was napping under the window.
“No-no, Roberta,” said Ramona. “Don’t hurt the nice magazine.”
Roberta had seen her mother leave. She gave Ramona a you’re-not-my-mother-and-I’m-not-going-to-stop look and rumpled a few more pages. She did not intend to mind her sister, not when she had invented a new game. She tore off another page and took a bite.
“No-no, Roberta,” cried Ramona. “Icky. Nasty. ’Pit it in Ramona’s hand.”
Roberta’s game was getting better. She opened her mouth and let soggy paper fall into Ramona’s hand.
“Ick,” said Ramona. “Good girl.” She pulled the magazine away from Roberta and tossed it on the coffee table. Then she threw the wet, chewed-up paper into the cold fireplace.
While Ramona was doing this, Clawed began to cough, a hacking, gagging cough. Hair balls, thought Ramona, stricken. She hadn’t brushed him enough. He was going to throw up, right there on the carpet, and she would have to clean it up. Ugh. Ick. Clawed hacked harder. There was the ripping sound of Roberta tearing up more paper. She had managed to pull the magazine off the coffee table again. At least tearing up a magazine would keep her busy for a while.
“Hang on, Clawed,” cried Ramona as she opened the front door. She seized the cat around his heaving middle and, in spite of his weight, managed to carry him outside, down the steps, and set him on the shaggy winter grass. She started back to Roberta. But what if Clawed ran off? What would she do if she lost Jeremy’s cat? She decided that Roberta, busy with the magazine, was safe for a few seconds. She returned to Clawed, hung on to him to make sure he wouldn’t get away, and ordered, “Spit it out, Clawed,” while she worried about what her mother and Beezus—they were due any minute—would say if they found her outside with the cat instead of inside with Roberta.
With one last cough Clawed freed himself of the hair ball.
“Thanks,” muttered Ramona as she started to lug him into the house. Clawed had a different idea. He struggled out of her grasp and ran back into the house without any help from her. “Stupid cat,” said Ramona. “If you didn’t wash so much, you wouldn’t get hair balls.” She found Clawed sitting on the carpet washing just as Roberta, leaving her blanket behind, crawled toward his uninhabited kitty condo. Before Ramona could reach her, she stuck her head inside the lower hole to see what was inside.
“Roberta!” cried Ramona. What if her mother and Beezus walked in now?
Roberta sneezed and began to cry. The inside of the kitty condo was dark, scary, and full of cat hair. She did not like it one bit. Ramona grasped her little sister around the waist and pulled. Roberta, frightened at being tugged, screamed harder. Clawed stopped washing long enough to look over his shoulder with disapproval. Clawed did not care for noise.
“It’s all right, Roberta.” Ramona tried to sound soothing as she pulled. Roberta screamed harder, her cries muffled by the walls of the scratching post. Ramona held her breath when she heard a car and let it out when the car did not turn into the Quimbys’ driveway. She did not want her mother and Beezus to find Roberta breathing cat hair with her head stuck in a hole.
What do I do now? Ramona thought desperately as she gently stroked Roberta’s back to calm her. “There, there. Ramona will get you out.” But how? Screaming, Roberta frantically beat her little feet on the carpet and pushed at the scratching post with her hands.
What if she smothers? thought equally frantic Ramona. Should I call 911? Firemen would come and save her, wouldn’t they? They often saved people on television. She started for the telephone. But she isn’t going to smother, Ramona suddenly realized, not if she’s screaming. She has to breathe to scream, and she must be breathing hard from all the noise she’s making. Once more Clawed paused in his washing to disapprove. A cat needed peace and quiet, especially when his fur had been rumpled.
I’ve got to think, Ramona told herself. Fast, before Mother comes home. If Roberta’s head went into the hole, it should come out. What was different? Roberta was not crying when she stuck her head in the hole—that was what was different. Her mouth was closed. Now it was open. Her chin was in the way. All Ramona had to do was get Roberta to stop crying. How? Then Ramona had an inspiration. She said as cheerfully as she could manage when she was so frightened, “Whe-e-ere’s Roberta?” Her sister always enjoyed the peekaboo game.
Roberta’s answer was to beat her feet harder and go on screaming. Ramona could see her idea was not going to work. She would have to think of something else. She heard another car. Was it? No, it wasn’t the Quimby car. She tried to think what else amused Roberta. Then it came to her. Mother Goose rhymes! Ramona gently rubbed her sister’s back, put her mouth close to her shoulder, and began softly, “Three little kittens . . .”
Roberta’s feet stopped pounding on the carpet. Encouraged, Ramona continued, “. . . lost their mittens . . .” Roberta stopped crying. She must be listening. Ramona went on reciting as she gently tugged at Roberta’s shoulders. “Lost your mittens, you naughty kittens! Then you shall have no pie. Mee-ow, mee-ow . . .” That was Roberta’s favorite part of the rhyme. Ramona carefully pulled her sister’s head out of the hole and went limp with relief. Then she hugged the baby, who was, at the moment, the most precious person in the whole world. Roberta snuggled against Ramona, who finished the rhyme, “No, you shall have no pie.” Roberta was pleased. “Mo-mo,” she said.
Ramona kissed her sister. “Mo-mo” was Roberta’s way of saying “Ramona.” She set Roberta down, handed her the little blanket, ran for a Kleenex, wiped her nose, and threw all the torn pages in the fireplace. Then, as she heard the Quimby car pull into the driveway, she picked up her book. Roberta was holding her blanket against her face with one hand while she sucked the thumb of her other hand and watched Clawed carefully wash the tip of his tail. I did it, thought Ramona. I baby-sat. I was responsible. Worn out by her responsibility, she opened her book and pretended she had been reading all along, but she was thinking, One more day and Clawed will go home.
“I can see that the three of you got along just fine,” commented Mrs. Quimby as she came into the room.
“Yes, and you were gone a long time,” answered Ramona.
Mrs. Quimby glanced at her watch. “Only fifteen minutes. There was more traffic than I expected.”
Only fifteen minutes. It had seemed like hours to Ramona.
“Roberta looks ready for a nap,” said Mrs. Quimby as she picked up the baby—“oopsy-daisy”—and carried her off to her room.
Ramona laid down her book and watched Beezus take off her jacket and unwind her muffler. “I was just thinking . . .” she said, and paused.
“Good for you,” said Beezus.
Ramona ignored this and said, “I was just thinking—how do you get to be a cheerleader?”
10
THE VALENTINE BOX
Early in February the weather changed to wind and snow. Mrs. Pitt managed to shovel a path on the sidewalk in front of her house. Then schools were closed for almost a week. Ramona and Daisy were too busy coasting on the Thirty-seventh Street hill on Mr. Quimby’s old sled, “a real antique,” Beezus called it, to think about anything that had happened at school.
That was why Ramona was surprised when school reopened and gray envelopes of class pictures were handed out. Feeling sure that Bill had snapped her picture a second before she made a face, she opened her envelope expecting to see herself cute and perky, maybe a little bit pretty. But no. She wasn’t cute. She wasn’t perky or the least bit pretty. She was a plain, ordinary girl making an ugly face. Ashamed, she shoved her envelope into her book bag.
Unfortunately, everyone in the class had, in addition to a big picture and several smaller pictures, a sheet of pictures of each member shown slightly larger than a postage stamp. Everyone pointed to Ramona’s picture and snickered.
Susan said much too nicely, “It’s too bad about your picture, Ramona.”
Daisy, who was always kind, said, “Don’t worry about it, Ramona. We all know you don’t really look like that.”
Yard Ape was silent. Ramona was suddenly cross with him for not paying attention to her, not even on the bus. It wasn’t her fault Mrs. Meacham confiscated his note and embarrassed him in front of the class.
Ramona tossed her hair to show her class she didn’t care what they thought. When she returned home that day, she hid her pictures and hoped her family would never find them.
This lasted for about a week until one evening at dinner Mrs. Quimby asked, “Ramona, what happened to your school pictures? Howie’s grandmother says he has his.” There were no secrets in this neighborhood.
Ramona took a big bite of potato. She wasn’t supposed to talk with her mouth full.
“You don’t like your picture,” guessed Beezus.
Ramona chewed her potato more than potato needed to be chewed.
“Come on, Ramona,” said her father. “We love you no matter how you look. Go get them.”
Ramona swallowed, sighed, and fetched the gray envelope, which she thrust at her father. He pulled out the individual pictures and passed them around to the family, who, as Ramona expected, laughed. She put on her you-hurt-my-feelings expression and said, “You’re being horrid to me.”
“I think this is a great picture.” Mr. Quimby smiled at his middle daughter. “It captures the real Ramona.”
“It does not!” contradicted Ramona.
“Your Grandpa Day is going to love this,” said Mrs. Quimby, “and so will your Aunt Bea.”
“Mom, that’s mean! That picture is awful. I hate it.” Ramona wondered if this was all worth a tantrum and decided it wasn’t. Maybe she was outgrowing tantrums. Instead she explained about Roberta and the peas. She concluded with, “If Roberta had eaten her peas, I would have had a nice picture. At least I don’t spit on the floor l
ike Roberta.”
Mrs. Quimby reached over and patted Ramona’s hand. “We all know you are nicer than your picture,” she said.
“Except sometimes,” said Beezus.
Ramona ignored her sister. “All the kids at school except Daisy laughed at me,” she went on, “and now our relatives will, too.” She was beginning to run out of reasons to feel sorry for herself.
Beezus spoke up. “What difference does it make? When we take our family picture for our next Christmas card, you can smile twice as hard to make up for your school picture.”
This led to a discussion of how the family should pose for their Christmas-card picture even though Christmas was months away. After that no more was said about Ramona’s picture. At school everyone seemed to have forgotten it, too, perhaps because Mrs. Meacham brought out a box decorated with hearts that Ramona could see had been used in the many classes Mrs. Meacham had taught in years past. Mrs. Meacham made a little speech about not hurting anyone’s feelings. Everyone must give a valentine to everyone else in the class. Ramona had heard this speech from previous teachers and knew the problem could be solved by buying kits that held enough valentines for an entire class, silly valentines with words such as “Bee my valentine” with a picture of a bee, or “I choo-choose you for my valentine” with a bear driving a locomotive. For special friends some people might enclose a candy heart with “Be my valentine” or “I love you” printed on it. For extraspecial friends fourth graders, usually girls, made valentines decorated with heart stickers and paper lace. This was the part of Valentine’s Day Ramona liked best.
That week after dinner Ramona worked on her valentines. Of course she made Daisy’s first, with a big pink heart surrounded by yellow daisies, which she drew with the colored pencils her father had bought her. She made another with pink and red hearts for Janet and another, a plain valentine with just one heart, for Howie. It looked too plain, so she drew a hammer, a saw, and some nails around the heart. Howie would like that.
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