Writers' Workshop: Gepeto is Found!

Another piece of writing from my junior high teaching days (May '04) as I practiced the craft of writing alongside my students:



Gepeto is Found

"Here kitty, kitty, kitty. Here kitty, kitty, kitty." Anne's anguished cry beamed out into the falling darkness like a fog horn trying to warn ships in a dense fog. She was trying to bring her cat Gepeto back inside. Gepeto was lost.



Gepeto was a black cat, kind of skinny, with a smallish head. Gepeto was an inside cat and Anne was worried. It all started when her son Joseph had left the door open too long this morning as he was leaving for school. Gepeto was in a playful mood and was running around the house. The door was open, and out he ran.

Gepeto was a well-loved cat. Anne had gotten Gepeto four years ago when a friend had moved away. Gepeto was going to the pound until Anne stepped in with an offer of asylum. Gepeto got a new home and a new love: Anne.



Anne was a cat lover. She had had five cats of her own when she had left Maine to move to California. The Gepeto Project was one of her ways of showing gratitude for those people in Maine who had adopted her cats. Anne was worried for Gepeto. And rightfully so.

Three days passed before they found the body.



Joseph was raking leaves in the back yard when he discovered Gepeto's stiff body under a bush. It looked like a car had hit Gepeto; not enough to kill him outright, but enough to end his new life in Anne's home.

Joeseph knew that Anne would be heart-broken at the news, but he knew what he had to do. He left Gepeto under the bush for now and walked slowly to the house to give Anne the bad news.

* * * * *

Since this is Sunday morning... I'll give a ray of hope that the story doesn't have... A line from a song: "Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal."



I see in my own writings echoes of the melodramatic bent of my youngest daughter. What goes around comes around. ;-)