Enter the cat...meet Leopold

This is my great-grandmother's cat, so docile on her lap. She's knitting and he's not even chasing the yarn. But I have a cat that looks remarkably like this one and my cat can act demure and innocent one moment, then get into mischief as soon as I turn my back.

So it is with The Luck of the Buttons's Leopold, who belongs to the elderly Thompson sisters but, unbeknownst to them, finds adventures all over town. 

Leopold outsized most raccoons. His belly hung so low he collected all manner of leaves and ground scraps, which he then left on the library carpet every time someone let his shaggy self through the door. You could always tell where Leopold had been when you went into the library, as there was a trail of leaves and grass marking his path, like Hansel and Gretel's crumbs. Usually he went to the children's area, because he got lots of attention there until somebody's mother shooed him out. Then he went scurrying in a straight line for the door, mewing as if maimed. 

How a cat that fat had gotten himself up in the apple tree Tugs couldn't imagine. But sure enough, there he was, the tiny sisters carrying on beneath the tree.

The Plot Thickens

This is another family photo that has fascinated me for years. Most of the pictures we have from that era are posed, taken for an occasion. So, like the porch picture I wrote about yesterday, I've long wondered who had a camera on this trip. Where is this group going and where have they been? How long have they been stranded? 

Again, I imagined Tugs looking through the lens. I imagined that the man was a stranger who'd chanced along. What was his business, appearing on a country road out of nowhere?

Meet Harvey Moore, a slick and optimistic newsman on his way to deliver progress to Goodhue, Iowa. He's come to help, so why is Tugs wary?

Meet the Buttons

A framed enlargement of this picture has hung on a wall in each of my last three houses. It is a family photograph with my grandmother's handwriting on the back: 1927 House north of town. My grandma is the one standing next to the door. Her in-laws are seated on the edge of the porch, holding my Aunt Sylvia.

Who's house is this, north of town? Why is the window broken? Why are the chickens running around? There is another picture taken just a moment before or after, without the chickens. I could find the answers to these questions easily, but because wondering about it is half the fun, I haven't asked. 

Most of all, I've wondered, why was the picture taken at all, and who is behind the camera? As a writing exercise I tried starting a story with this scene. I wrote as if this weren't my family at all, but some strangers I was encountering for the first time. After a few flat starts, Tugs Button (see yesterday's post) popped into my head as a spunky twelve-year-old girl with a new camera. This is my family, she seemed to say. Let me tell you about them. 

When something went wrong in the Button family, they shrugged, they sighed, they shook their heads. “Just our luck,” the Buttons said. 

Tell me more, I said to Tugs. And she did.