What I'd give to see a bear, even a lost one dumpster-diving at a boondocky bus-stop. Alas, Bruin and his imaginary friends stand little chance of survival or secrecy in a time when wilder needs and innocent pleasures have been traded for the all-encompassing pursuit of success on a singular stage. Pooh to that!
The meep!, whose name arose from the only utterance he seems capable of at this stage of life, is one of three brothers found wedged in a hole in the wall behind a petrol station at Tanjong Katong. He appears to be the runt of the litter and suffers from a curious tendency to leap into the wastepaper basket. At his foster home, he shared a little house made out of a shoebox with his siblings and was kept away from the two resident cats who eyed the kittens with audible interest.
Angel, on the other hand, seems unable to decide if meep! is a treat or trick. On the first night, she eyed him warily, issued impotent hisses and then scurried off to sulk on top of the bookshelf. The meep! doesn't help his cause by lurking under Angel's foodbowl, licking my belly and treating all accessible surfaces of the bedroom as his playground. Today, at least, the two have entered a truce of sorts, which will happily never bloom into anything close to a tryst.
- - - - - - - - -
"Is that the end of the story?" asked Christopher Robin.
"That's the end of that one. There are others."
"About Pooh and Me?"
"And Piglet and Rabbit and all of you. Don't you remember?"
"I do remember, and then when I try to remember, I forget."
"That day when Pooh and Piglet tried to catch the Heffalump -- "
"They didn't catch it, did they?"
"No."
"Pooh couldn't, because he hasn't any brain. Did I catch it?"
"Well, that comes into the story."
Christopher Robin nodded.
"I do remember," he said, "only Pooh doesn't very well, so that's why he likes having it told to him again. Because then it's a real story and not just a remembering."
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