Disclaimer: I don't own CATS!
Fact: Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet was co-founded the first institution for the education for the deaf in North America. After learning French Sign Language in Paris, Gallaudet and Lauent Clerc, a deaf graduate from a French university, co-founded the first deaf school in the United States. American Sign Language is a mixture of French Sign Langauge brought back from France by Gallaudet and Clerc, and the signs which the students at this school made up themselves. Evolving over time into American Sign Language.
Lyplora read the words to the healing spell very carefully, mouthing the words and practicing the hand movements that went with it. This was a very intricate spell, it was meant to start a cats heart again if they died. She practiced opening and closing her paws and moving them back and fourth like a heart beating, contrentrating on the idea of guiding a heart to beat again.
Suddenly, she noticed something moving in the corner of her eye and she turned to check on the kittens sleeping in the nest. She closed the book and got up and walked to the nest only to see that it was just Socrates lying on his back and pawing at the air in his sleep.
She smiled at the sight, they were all so precious sleeping together in a little pile, she hoped to have kittens of her own one day, but for now, sitting for Admetus was the next best thing.
It took her a few minutes to tear her eyes off the little fur balls and finally get back to her book. Sitting down and trying to find her place, she felt gratefull that the kittens were so good about going to bed without complaining.
When she found her place, she got back to what felt like a vain attempt to practice something she would never be able to do. She practiced mouthing the words, wishing she could say them and perform the act the spell was meant for, wishing she could be a healer.
"Why did I ever ask Misto if I could borrow his book, I'm not a healer, I'm just wasting time," she thought to herself. "I should have brought 'Black Beauty' or 'War and Peace', at least reading one of those would make sense."
She closed the book and picked up the note book she had brought. She flipped through the pages examining each of her poems, wondering which one she could recite at the Jellicle Ball. 'The Hunter and the Unicorn,' no, maybe some of her haikus... no. As she looked through the book, nothing seemed right, finally, she noticed one that she had written earlier that week.
We Live, We Die:
We survive, we thrive, we live, we die.
We stay on this little rock in the sea
of existence, before we pass on.
We begin, we finish; we hear and
sea but a fraction of what we pass on our way,
and comprehend even less.
Dreaming and breathing,
searching and finding,
living and dying.
Inoccent and enlightened,
hopeful and frightened,
curious but aloof, we all wander.
Utopia and prison, trapped yet free,
that is how we all live.
Some things must change,
others will never change,
who can decipher?
Finding the beautiful, finding the ugly,
the physical and existential, the absolutes and the symbolic,
we can't even see the difference sometimes.
We survive, we thrive,
we live, we die.
The answer again was no, but not because it wasn't good. It was because she didn't want them to think she was being pretentious.
She continued to search, until she noticed an unusual entry. It was a poem she had written back when she had been engaged. It was one of the few poems of her's she had memorized and had only recently jotted down in her new note book. Maybe this one, but she wasn't sure, some cats might not get what it meant.
She read the poem repeatedly, trying to figure out what some of it meant herself, when suddenly Admetus walked in, carrying a chinese takeout box.
She looked up and smiled at him, closing her notebook and setting it aside. "How was your evening out?" she asked.
"It was nice, I went for a walk in the city and some human chunked this box of shrimp and rice at me."
Lyplora put a paw to her mouth to stiffle a giggle, that human had no idea how much he had helped Admetus.
"Did the kittens behave while I was gone?" he asked, looking over to the nest of sleeping kits.
Lyplora nodded and signed, "they always behave perfectly, you don't need to worry."
Admetus sighed out of relief and signed, "I'm just afraid of losing my kitten sitters and not being able to take these nights out to relax and gather food."
Lyplora waved her paw at this and signed, "don't worry, me and Cassandra love watching the kittens, we're glad we can help you."
"You've made it a lot easier for me, especially by getting Cassandra to help out when you and Misto can't, it's hard sometimes raising this many kits myself, you've really helped me out." He signed all this with an earnest look on his face, and then pulled a grin and opened the chinese takeout box.
"Have one," he signed, offering her a shrimp, which she accepted.
After assuring Admetus several more times that everything was alright and nothing had happened while he was out, Lyplora gathered up her things and headed back to her lair.
When she got there, she went straight inside and laid down and started looking through her poems again. She thought about the one she had written for her fiance, and then drifted to thinking of the day he had died. The traffic and the people going by as if they didn't even see, and there in the middle of the street was a broken and bleeding body.
"If anything like that ever happens again, if I ever have to lose someone I love..." she thought this and then realized something.
She opened the healing book and went back to the spell she was studying.
"I have to learn how to do this, so what happened before won't happen again. I didn't know how to heal last time, but if anything ever happens to any of the cats I care about, I'll know what to do this time."