Surprises

Daily Writing Practice
Prompt: Write about a time someone surprised you.
From: "A Writer's Book of Days"

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The world is full of places, small dark and secretive, where surprises might hide. There are deep closets with squeaky doors that wont stay closed, and dark under-beds where dust bunnies breed.

With each place of hidden surprise comes a thing to deliver that surprise. An empty pocket of a stored winter coat might hold a folded five dollar bill. The other side of the corner at the end of a long hall might just hide the little brother who wil jump out and yell "Boo!"

The most surprising of surprises however are usually not even in the small dark and secretive places of hiden surprise. The biggest surprises have often been right with you the whole time, pretenidng not to be surprises at all.

Virvinia was threated to such a surprise one morning when her cat decided to talk to her.

She ws in the bed, trying hard to stay there until her mother came to get her. She was always the first to rise on a Saturday and both parents often scolded her for waking them too early.

She was determined to avoid another such scolding this morning.

The cat was sitting on the windowsill, washing its whiskers.

It was a fluffy white cat and had a great many whiskers, which it spent much time washing. Virginia was trying to decided if it was the dirtiest or the cleanest cat in the world. As much as it washed it surely had to be one of the two.

Watching a cat wash its whiskers wasn't terribly thrilling, and she was just about to get out of bed and risk another scolding when it stopped washing long enough to say, "The barn cats say the rats want to speak with you."

"Rats can't talk," Virginia told the cat. "They are vermin."

Right then she was so surprised she had forgotten to be surprised at all.

"Most rodents are vermin," the cat agreed. "But you have rodent royalty in your barn. You really should speak with them."

With that the cat leapt down from the windowsill and padded out of the room.

"How rude," Virginia said to herself. "He didn't even say goodbye."

It wasn't until later, when her father ungraciously booted the cat out of the kitchen for meal time that she remember that she should be surprised that the cat had spoken at all.

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