“Come here, kitty,” said Jan. “You want to play with your toys? Look what we bought for you.” She tossed a rubber mouse across the floor, and the kitten went skidding after it.
“Hey, it likes its toy!” exclaimed Jan.
“We better decide whether the kitten is a boy or a girl,” said Candy. “Then we won’t have to call it ‘it.’”
“We need a name for it, too,” said Hannah.
Dinnie picked the kitten up and examined it. “I can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl,” she said. “It’s too young. We’ll have to wait a couple of weeks until it’s older.”
“How are we going to name it?” asked Hardy. “We have to know whether it’s a boy or a girl.”
Bainbridge frowned. “Let’s go outside and think about this. It’s too hot in here.”
Jan scooped the kitten up, and she and the rest of the kids marched through the screen door, which closed with a bang behind the last one, and out to the oak tree where Sally was buried. They sat in an untidy group. Hardy untied one of his sneakers and dangled the lace in front of the kitten, watching it bat it back and forth.
Abbie gazed around at her brothers and sisters and thought that they didn’t look a thing like the New York kids who’d moved to the country almost a year ago. Those kids had been worried about pollution and muggers and cockroaches. They hadn’t known a rose from a daffodil. The kids sitting under the oak tree were relaxed, slightly dirty (except for Ira), and not worried about much at all, except maybe bee stings. Or whose room the new baby would sleep in. They’d raised a nestful of birds, survived a snowstorm, and discovered a secret room in their house.
It was thoughts such as those that gave Abbie the courage to say, “I’ve got an idea about naming the kitten.”
“What?” asked the others.
“I was just thinking that the ten of us haven’t turned out too badly. Think of everything that’s happened this year. We started at new schools and made new friends and had adventures. And we did it all with names like Dagwood and Calandra.”
“And Bainbridge,” added Bainbridge.
“Right,” said Abbie. “So maybe Mom knows what she’s doing. Or maybe not. But I think we should take the kitten’s name from What Shall We Name the Baby? That way we won’t have to argue over the name, and Mom would be flattered if we used the book. And it would be nice to flatter her since she did finally let us get a pet.”
The Rosso kids considered this.
At last Bainbridge said importantly, “Abbie, do you move that we name the kitten from What Shall We Name the Baby?”
“Yes,” replied Abbie. “I do.”
“I second the motion,” said Candy.
“All those in favor say aye,” instructed Bainbridge.
“Aye,” said Abbie, Bainbridge, Candy, Woody, Hardy, Faustine, Dinnie, Hannah, Ira, and Jan.
“Those opposed?”
Silence.
“Go get the book,” said Bainbridge.
Abbie retrieved the book from the house and opened it to the L pages.
“Hey,” said Candy, “what if Mom and Dad have another kid, after Kelly or Keegan? Or what if they have twins again? We better not use up either one of the twelfth L names.”
“That’s true,” Abbie agreed. “But then we’re not really using Mom’s system.”
“We don’t know how many kids might be in our family one day, though,” Candy pointed out.
“Well, we know one thing. There probably won’t be twenty-six,” Hannah said. “Let’s start at the back of the book and give the kitten a Z name.”
“The last Z name,” Ira added. “Whatever it is. There probably aren’t very many of them.”
“Okay,” said Abbie. “We’ll look up the last boy’s Z name and the last girl’s Z name. When we know what the kitten is, we’ll give it the right one.”
Abbie opened the book gingerly. She was almost afraid to look. “Well,” she said, “guess what. If it’s a girl — Zsa Zsa.”
“Zsa Zsa! That’s cute!” exclaimed Jan.
“And if it’s a boy — Zuriel.”
“Oh, weird,” muttered Hannah.
“Not weirder than Eberhard,” said Hardy.
“What’s going on out here?”
The Rosso kids looked up to see their mother crossing the farmyard.
“Mom, meet Zsa Zsa or Zuriel,” said Abbie, holding up the kitten.
She explained how they had arrived at the names, and Mrs. Rosso began to look teary-eyed. “What a nice idea,” she said.
“Don’t get too carried away,” Faustine cautioned her, grinning. “If you and Dad have twins again, then we get to have a dog, too.”
“Oh, brother,” said Mrs. Rosso, shaking her head.
“Let’s see. A dog,” said Abbie. “What would we name it?”
“Second to last Y names,” Hardy replied.
“And those,” said Abbie, thumbing through the book, “are Yvette and Yule.”
“Yule!” cried Hardy, choking. “You know something? I’m glad I’m named Eberhard!”
“And I’m glad I’m named Dagwood,” said Woody.
“Well, I’ll tell you something,” Mrs. Rosso spoke up. “I’d love all you kids no matter what you were named.”
“Even if we were John and Jim and Sue and Sally and not in alphabetical order?” asked Ira.
“Even then.”
Ira sighed with contentment. His brothers and sisters turned look-alike freckled faces to Zsa Zsa or Zuriel and smiled at their first pet.
Ten kids, one pet, and a new baby on the way. Mrs. Rosso sighed with contentment, too.
About the Author
Ann M. Martin in the acclaimed and bestselling author of a number of novels and series, including Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), A Dog’s Life, Here Today, P.S. Longer Letter Later (written with Paula Danziger), the Doll People series (written with Laura Godwin), the Main Street series, and the generation-defining series The Baby-sitters Club. She lives in New York.
Copyright © 1988 by Ann M. Martin.
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ISBN 978-0-545-59360-1
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