The journey home with the orphaned kitten was difficult. Trying to sneak around and keep the kid quiet was a true master's task. But all the same they'd made it back to the safe house with only three real close calls.
Bentley looked up, stared at Wyoming for about a minute, took of his glasses, polished them against the table cloth, and then put them back on. "Sly, you stole a kid?"
Sly twitched his ear. "Okay, Wy, come on, time for bed." He said, scoping the kit off his shoulders and walked into the part of the house with the bed. There were three cots and an old smelly hammock. Sly and the gang slept on the cots, the hammock was pretty much always empty. With the kit still cradled in his arms, he put the kit onto his own cot and pulled up the covers for him, thinking of his father. Then as he turned to leave, Wyoming meowed, "Wait!"
Sly turned. "Yeah?"
"Can't you read me a bedtime story?" Wyoming asked.
Sly smiled at first as a bittersweet memory washed over him.
Sly was very young as he lay on his own bed. The hands of a raccoon pulled up the covers for him. They were his father's. His father turned to leave, and Sly yelled out, "Wait!"
His father turned and looked at him. Then he walked back over to the bedside and crouched down. "Yes, Sly?"
"Daddy, can you read me a bedtime story? Please?" Sly asked, staring into his father's kind eyes.
"I can't, I'm pretty busy tonight, son. Maybe tomorrow."
But he would not read the tale tomorrow.
Sly sat in his bed and stared at the book he had hoped his father would read him. It was just a short simple nursery fable. He stared at his door. Maybe he could go ask again, maybe Dad wasn't as busy now.
Just as Sly pushed open his bedroom door, the front door to the house opened, and five creatures poured. Sly's eyes widened with fear and he retreated a bit into his room, the door ajar so he could see the fight. He gasped as the blow from the owl was landed, and his parents lay dead. After the creatures left with bits and pieces of his father's favored book, the theivius raccoonus, Sly crept out of hiding. He touched his father's shoulder. "Dad? Dad, wake up… It's not bedtime for you yet… Dad? Dad? Wake up… please…"
"Please?" Wyoming meowed.
Sly stared at the kitten. "I can't," he said shortly, "I'm pretty busy tonight." It felt weird saying the words he'd just heard his father say in his memory, and he wondered if something like that would ever happen to him. What if it did? What if he died without telling some one he truly cared about that he loved them? What if he died while some one close was mad at him? Sly shook his head. He needn't worry about that now. Besides, he really did have work to do.
As he sat at the table and listened to Bentley drone on about a plan, he wondered… Had his father really been too busy to read him the story?