Rainbow’s End

/ D. Avery @shiftnshake

square-template3.pngThe cat escaped winter’s cold and never looked back.

The Carrot Ranch February 20 challenge? In 99 words (no more, no less), write a story about a library cat named Rainbow who escapes. Use this situation to write what happens next. Where does this situation take place, and who else might be involved? Go where the prompt leads! This week’s Six Sentence Stories prompt word? Claim. Here’s one story answering two prompts. Thanks Charli! Thanks Denise!

Rainbow’s End

Following close on snowy heels of library patrons, the cat escaped winter’s cold and never looked back. Nobody claimed the stray; the cat with the bold stripes and bolder personality was allowed to keep its claim on the stuffed chair in Fiction.

When children read picture books aloud to him, the cat they called Rainbow purred blissfully. Rainbow gained a reputation among adult browsers, pawing titles they might otherwise have passed by.

Finally returned from vacation, the cat’s owners followed the stories to the library. Along with an endowment for books and for his care, they left Rainbow there.

six sentence story copy

33 thoughts on “Rainbow’s End”

  2. Well, talk about a feel good Six. Nice 🙂
    I was raised from a baby around dogs. Always dogs until a point in young adulthood when I had a relationship with a cat person. But even then, I treated them as dogs lol. One of them, would drape herself on my arm as I wrote in my weekly journal on Sundays. Perhaps felines are inclined toward all things academia? 🙂

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    • Ha, ha, Anne. My cat will walk on a leash, rides well in the truck, and used to go in to the classroom for weekend work when I was at the elementary school where she seemed to favor being in the classroom library. Of course she is a poor substitute for the one true pet.
      Thanks for the visit. May Dog be with you.

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  5. excellent Six.
    “Following close on snowy heels of library patrons,”

    Hey, thanks for the reminder of better writing* I liked the story, ’cause it was engaging and visualizable** and had a satisfying ending.
    But then when I went back over for commentational purposes, it hit me that the opening line was a verb.
    Well, not literally, but you know what I mean. It makes for so much more accessible a Six.
    This is the kind of learning and practice and such that I enjoy, i.e. reading and trying to decipher the underlying technique.
    Thanks

    * As noted in these pages before, I will occasionally subject myself to a the endless sites on rhetoric and how to write good, but there ain’t no writer’s block as densely powerful (imo) as reading about ‘How it is supposed to be done’.

    ** probably not a ‘real’ word

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    • Dear Clark;
      I can assure you that I have no idea ‘how it is supposed to be done’ but if what I do makes for an accessible Six, then I am gratified. It does make sense to read and pay attention to what you like and why. And I have come to greatly appreciate the constraints of these two challenges, the 99 word limit from Carrot Ranch and/or the six sentence limit from Denise. That first line did change and I like its current incarnation better too, but really it’s just because I had to get the cat in the dang door and only had so many words overall to get the cat from here to there. This Carrot Ranch prompt was different still this week, with the cat, its name, and its initial situation being given. (Because I am contrary, ornery even, I reversed it and had the cat escape into the library instead of away from it) You might enjoy not just the prompts over there at the Ranch but also Charli’s posts. We all have benefitted from the course work she is doing, getting her MFA in creative writing. She does the work, we get the synopsis. I at least challenge you to present your next Six Sentence story in 99 words exactly. It forces word choice, leading to better verbs and fewer similes and adjectives. Even if you have a longer story in mind you can boil it or a scene down to its essence. You can always expand it later, but might find that less is more and the scene better told. Least ways that’s the kool-aid I drank at the Ranch.

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  12. Sad that Rainbow was lost in the first place, but glad he found such a wonderful home! What better place for a cat to spend days then sleeping and purring happily while listening to stories. Love that the cat pawed at titles that patrons then selected – awesome! Maybe I should take my cats to the library. Hmm…

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  13. Pingback: A Library Cat Named Rainbow « Carrot Ranch Literary Community

  15. Oh I like that story! I like the ending best, that they let him stay at the library and with some endowment. It’s different take on happily ever after. Normally I prefer lost animals make it home but here it seems they left him where he would live his best life. 😀 Nice work!

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  17. Pingback: CRLC Challenge; Rainbow cat | ShiftnShake

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