Children’s Books
A Message To Tiger Lily
Excerpt
Chapter One
In the spring and summer, Mrs. Li spends a lot of time working in one of her many gardens.
She prefers to work in the mornings when it’s cool and never works in the rain. She wears a wide conical hat made of straw, which she ties under her jaw, and she hums. When I hear the humming from my borough, I hurry to find a place where I can sit and watch her. It comforts me to see her working. When she’s around, I know the Earth is turning at its usual pace, I know there will soon be seeds for me to eat, and I know there will be no trouble from anybody, especially from Tiger Lily.
Tiger Lily is a cat about the color of a school bus, and sometimes she seems about as large. You can see her from a mile away, and even at one whole mile, she puts fear in me. Although I know she won’t come anywhere near the place when Mrs. Li is in the garden, I take no chances and am careful to hide. I hide in the vines of the grape arbor, in the thick grass under the old bench, in the dense brush of the hedge where Mr. and Mrs. Bucky live, and in many different places of Mrs. Stingy’s stone wall where I live. But to be clear, I am not afraid of Mrs. Li. I consider her to be my friend. It is nice to have a friend and a companion when you live alone. Hence, whenever I hear the humming, I always stop what I’m doing and rush back to Mrs. Li’s garden, find a little place to sit, and listen to see if she has anything interesting to say.
I always find it amusing how, when she hears me scurrying about, she will look up and search for me. I’m amused to see how long it takes her to catch sight of me. And once she does, she always talks to me, usually starting with, “Oh! There you are, Alvin! I wondered if you were coming out today. It’s so nice to see you. I hope that rain yesterday didn’t put a leak in your little roof.”
My name is not Alvin, by the way. The only name I have ever had, I lost. That was the name “Idiot.” Maybe I’ll tell you about the name later if I have time, how I got it and how I lost it, but I don’t like to talk about that. For now, let’s just say Mrs. Li calls me Alvin. And although I think I do not like the name, merely having a name is comforting to me, and sometimes, when she talks to me like this, I’ll hop out and sit on top of the wall where I have a good vantage point and can hear every word she says.
Mrs. Li tells me unbelievable things, which I believe are true. She sure likes to talk while she works, and I sure like to listen.
Alvin, you always alone so much anymore. What happen to your little friend? I thought she was your wife. You always chasing her like squirrel running around chasing his wife. But you never have anybody to chase anymore. Maybe she got caught by the eagle, eh? Or maybe it was Tiger Lily. Did she come and make trouble, Alvin? She very bad cat. I think she make trouble just for fun of it.
Sometimes when Mrs. Li speaks, I let out a little squeak just to let her know I’m listening.
Cheep! Cheep! Cheep!
So, I see you always by yourself and have nobody to take care of you. I think you unhappy now. Nobody happy who live alone. Everybody need somebody to love. But I think you should not worry. Everything happen when time is right and always for a purpose. Pretty soon, a nice girl will come along for you to meet her and you will say, “Oh, what a thing to happen to me by chance! I meet a nice girl and we fall in love!”
But, Alvin, I must tell you. Nothing is by chance. Everything have purpose for our life. And you will make her happy also. Everybody happy when they in love. And when she have babies you’ll see what the purpose is of life and the reason for everything.
She’s right and I know it. When I first arrived here to live beside her garden I was alone. Then, I met Smarty Pants, and we made our home under the grape arbor for a short time until we discovered our new home inside Mrs. Stingy’s stone wall. Life was good then. But something happened involving the big fat orange cat I’ve already mentioned—Tiger Lily. A very bad cat, indeed!
Did I say I don’t like to talk about it? For now, all I’ll say is there was little happiness after that.
But I have been happier since Mrs. Li began working in her garden this spring, and began talking to me. Now she has become my friend. I like her humming, and I like her talking. Now and then, she surprises me with a treat. One day she says:
Alvin, you a very nice chipmunk. I like you very much. Here, I give you a little something.
She lays something I’ve never seen before on the old bench. It looks interesting and even edible. So I hurry over there and sniff it. The aroma is glorious.
It’s a roasted and lightly salted peanut! Yummy! Yummy! Here, let me show you.
She breaks the shell off and takes out the peanut and hands this to me. I take it from her fingers and taste it. I tell you, not even sunflower seeds have a better taste! She gives me another, and I sit there chewing on them while she goes back to work. The roasted and lightly salted peanuts taste so good they make my tail twitch when I eat them. For a little while, it’s like the old days when my tail used to flutter all the time.
There’s another thing I like about Mrs. Li. She taught her son to be kind to the little creatures, even to snakes, even to the creatures snakes eat. Her husband is also kind, although sometimes he comes into the garden and catches the little creatures by snatching them in a quick-handed way, examining them, petting them, and then letting them go in kindly manner. He has a little book that he keeps in his pocket. And sometimes he reads this book aloud, as if sharing its contents with anyone listening. The Lis are very kind people and I like them. They know many things and I learn a lot from them.
But that name Mrs. Li calls me—Alvin. It bothers me. The name itself is alright. At first, I thought it was a name she had given me on her own, just to have a name for me, which would have been alright. But then, I began to think that she was confusing me with someone else. Later, I began to see that she was not confusing me with someone else; instead, she was intentionally associating me with someone else for the purpose of mocking me.
This is when I learned how hurtful names can be.
So I do not like to be called Alvin, and I wish I had a good name. Certainly I do not like to be called by someone else’s name, especially when I do not know who that someone else is.
But like I said, it’s not that I don’t have a name. My wife, Smarty Pants, she had called me Idiot. This came about when we first met and witnessed Tiger Lily getting broomed badly by Mrs. Li. . . .
Never mind. I’ll tell the story later if I have time. But Smarty Pants was the name I gave her, and Idiot was her name for me. They were kind of like names of endearment, if you know what I mean, for just between us. But it was true that she was smart, and it’s true that I wasn’t so much.
So it seems I am stuck with Alvin, which when you think about it is a better name than Idiot.
Nevertheless, I have begun to understand that Mrs. Li’s name for me is really an endearing gesture used as an expression of love. At some level, I have begun to accept the name Alvin. After all, Mrs. Li does like me. Why else would she bring me roasted and lightly salted peanuts?
I guess names of endearment are alright after all. It’s just that I wish I had my own name.
Copyright @2025 by H.R. Novelton
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