Some days ago we were invited to a birthday party. The woman, our friend, had everything she wished and her house was full of all kinds of things, so we have been racking our brains, trying to choose a suitable present.
"You know, Eve," I offered. "Let's bring her a kitten. Such a small lovely creature, which will lie on her lap, like a warm fluffy ball, and purr sweetly, when she comes home after work and has a rest in a soft, comfortable armchair... It will soothe her.
I remember, when I was a little boy, I got the same kitten as a present. Its name was Pussy, and it always came into my bed to sleep. I clasp Pussy's warm fluffy body in my arms and we listened to my Granny Alice's fairy tale together... I just see her old-fashioned spectacles with thick pieces of glass, which were divided equally according to horizon line... behind which the future opened to her, and she could look into her past through the lower part of the glasses, she did that more and more often... and she could read close, and even to thread a needle, with which she managed time and again "to sew her mind to her skirt", that meant, she was at her wit's end... and then all her work had to be done from the beginning... But she stopped to hasten lately, she began to suspect that time was of no importance, and that there were much more important things in the life... And her work never hindered her to think... and to recollect the distant past, when she was a little girl Alice, and her father made her a present - it was the same, fluffy, kitten... and then she made her first sarafan, for her little kitten...But her kitten's name was Tiger, because it was striped and very brave. It was just the same kitten, which taught her to read the first words and she read her ABC-book to Tiger and many other books later, and Tiger listened patiently, purring contentedly on her lap..."
"No," Eve said. "No one knows, what kind of animal can grow up from the kitten. Do you remember a story, which we have read, about an ordinary kitten, who became a real tiger and ate up his master and mistress in gratitude for everything good they have done for this animal?"
And we came to a flower-shop and bought a small Japanese tree "bonsai", which was just ten centimeters in height. It was a tiny green bushy pine-tree. And we even heard a special lecture about art of growing such kind of small trees. Simply you should plant the small shoot, which grown up of a seed, upside down, to plant its top in the ground, and then a small tree will begin to grow from the root... this tree always remains small... But then, as a little girl Alice said, it could be "presented as a present".
