a story

Once upon a time, there was a little tiger. He was a different sort of little tiger and sometimes he would get very sad because he had lost his family to a freak accident that turned them into butter. He spent lots of time by himself, teaching himself things to try and understand the world he was part of.

As he got older, he traveled all over the world and met lots of the other animals there. He was friends with aloof giraffes, shy crocodiles and extroverted rhinoceroses just the same. He was friends with glorious singing birds with beautiful plumage and sharp wit. He even made friends with angry elephants at watering holes once he showed them that he was not afraid of their trumpeting and stomping about.

The tiger was very good at making friends of all the animals that no one else would be friends with. The tiger would make the not-so-pretty (we never say “ugly”) animals feel special and he would always have time for the sick or lonely animals to make sure they felt loved. Sometimes the tiger got into trouble, as tigers are always so likely to do, but he always turned out okay, because he was a very clever and resilient tiger.

Sometimes the tiger ended up in a cage, but he made the best of it while he needed to. He knew that no cage was really strong enough to hold a wild tiger. He knew that that which did not turn him into butter would only make him stronger. And he knew he had to be strong. He did not know why, but he knew this was something that had to be.

In another part of the world was a little kitten (well, she was really a *cat* but she still felt like a kitten in her head so we’ll be nice and play along). The kitten was not a worldly thing as a tiger. She hadn’t seen much of the world or the other animals in it. The times she had traveled beyond her own front yard had usually turned out very badly, and so she decided maybe it was best that she just stayed home.

She occupied her time with catnip and cream, with mice and strings and by writing down her dreams and placing them into the empty milk bottles that she left by her door every night. Each morning she woke up and her dreams would be gone, but there would be fresh milk and cream for her to have with her morning cake. She did not know where her dreams went, and she did not know where the milk came from but she thought it best not to question such things as the arrangement suited her just fine.

One day the tiger was coming home after a long day of hugging hedgehogs and porcupines (because no one else would) and he heard a horrible crash. Because it is tiger’s curious nature to investigate such things, he ran toward the sound and found a small white truck with wooden wheels had overturned at the bottom of the hill. Spilling out from the back of the truck was a knee-deep river of milk. The tiger stepped over it to the front of the truck and found a very agitated possum in a smart white hat trying to climb out over a large pile of sticks of butter. The tiger shuddered at the sight of the butter but bent down to help the possum, who gave a thankful nod to the tiger, brushed himself off and then immediately began fretting and pacing over the state of his foray into entrepreneurship.

The tiger tried to console the possum, who had worked himself into a lather thicker than the whipped cream that had begun to ooze out of the top of the truck. The possum ranted about how horrible it all was and how it was just not worth it anymore since the bottom had fallen out of the dream market.

“Look!” he shrieked as he threw open the glove compartment and a hundred folded sheets of paper spilled out onto a mound of whipped cream.

“Some of them don’t even make any sense! I can’t make tooth or tail of these dreams and I sure can’t feed my dozen kids with them!”

The tiger looked at one of the papers. As he read it his tail twitched. He read it again. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear he was reading one of his own dreams.

He began to say to the possum, “This isn’t so bad, it just says…”

“Then you take it!” the possum screamed.

And with that, the possum began filling his satchel with as much cheese and butter as he could carry and began wandering down the road talking to himself, leaving the tiger there - standing in a puddle of milk - holding all of the kitten’s dreams.

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