Clumsy Daddy

One day, Daddy was doing something in the kitchen and I went out to see if he needed any help. He didn't know I was there, and he stepped back and stepped right on my paw. Boy, that really hurt! I screamed, and that almost scared Daddy out of his skin. He jumped up and yelped. He sounded really worried. He picked me and kissed my little paw and told me he was sorry. We just stood there for a minute while he tried to figure out if he had hurt me really bad. I tried to tell him that I was OK, but I was still really shook up.

After a minute, Daddy took me into the other room and sat in his big chair. He rocked back and put me on his chest and cuddled me for a while. After a couple of minutes, I was able to start purring, just to let him know I was OK. I knew it was an accident, so it didn't bother me all that much. But I worried that maybe I had scared him out of a year's growth.

Daddy said he'd have to do something so that we wouldn't have any more accidents like that. The next day, when he came home, Daddy had a bright red collar with a little bell on it. He put my rabies tag on there, too. He said the sound of that would let him know when I was around so that he wouldn't step on me again.

I didn't really like that collar. It was really uncomfortable. One night, I chewed through it so it fell off. When Daddy got up and saw what I had done, he was really unhappy with me. That day, he brought another one home. This one was blue, and it had a bell on it too. He put my rabies tag on it and put the collar on me. I really didn't like it, but Daddy said I'd better not chew that one off.

That night, when we were getting ready for bed, Daddy took my collar off and put it up on the bookcase. He said it would be OK for me to not wear it at night. Every morning, Daddy would put my collar on me and every night, he'd take it off. He said I looked really handsome in my sporty little collar and all the rest of the cats in the world would be jealous of me. After that, I didn't mind it too much, mostly because I knew he'd take it off of me at night.

And Daddy never stepped on me again after that.