A six-year-old boy alternately laughed like a hyena and emitted high-pitched raptor squeals. He’d started encouraging the six other kids at Paige’s Cats and Crafts event, and the volume in the cat room was deafening. Most of the cats had declined to participate and were instead hiding under the furniture.
Paige clapped her hands a few times to get everyone’s attention. “Kids? Hi, kids! We’re going to get started on the crafts in just a minute, but I need everyone to lower your voices. Hunter, you scare the cats when you make noises like that. If you guys want the cats to help with the crafts, you have to be a little quieter.”
The boy looked chastened, but still talked through a lot of her presentation. She had set up supplies on the table for the kids to make cat masks with paper plates and tongue depressors. She’d gotten some cheap yarn from Stitches that the kids could glue to the masks to look like fur, and she had kid-friendly glue sticks, crayons, markers, and safety scissors she’d bought with the fundraising money.
Once the kids knew what to do, they calmed down and got to work. Even Hunter the Screamer mostly focused his attention on making his mask look like a lion. As the kids quieted down, the cats took tentative steps out from under the furniture. By the time the kids were almost done, a couple of cats were sitting on the table with them, sniffing at the kids’ projects. Mr. Darcy got a hold of a ball of yarn and took off with it in his mouth, then rolled around on the floor with it, attacking it like it was his greatest enemy.
“And I thought cats playing with yarn was just something from cartoons,” said one of the moms.
Evan showed up a half hour after the event began and looked startled as he walked into the room.
“Don’t hate me,” he whispered to Paige, “but I completely forgot this was happening.”
“I don’t suppose you want to make a cat mask.”
“Are you kidding?”
Evan dove right in, sitting next to Hunter and drawing a beautiful cat face on a paper plate. Paige hadn’t known Evan even liked kids, although she did know he’d never met a craft he didn’t like. But Evan asked the kids questions and helped them draw and cut yarn. Considering he was working with crayons and yarn, the mask he made was surprisingly lifelike. Paige was grateful for the help, because the kids had started to overwhelm her.
Paige did not have a ton of experience working with children. A few of her friends and family members had kids, but she rarely saw them. Paige liked kids and had liked the idea of doing crafts with them in the abstract, but she had somehow not anticipated the kids would be this rowdy.
She had never thought much about having her own kids. She’d always assumed she’d have one or two, but in the same way she assumed she’d get married someday. It seemed like a logical part of her life plan.
She thought of Josh and how well their relationship was going, even though she hadn’t seen him in a week. That was okay, though. Josh had been working, but so had Paige. Creating a schedule for today, managing sign-ups, and obtaining all the supplies had taken up most her time the last couple of days. But having Josh here would have been fun. It was likely that he didn’t know any more about kids than Paige did, but she could imagine him throwing himself into this project with as much gusto as Evan had.
She smiled to herself. Yeah, Josh would have had fun here. Paige was surprised to find that she missed him a great deal. They hadn’t spoken much in the last week, either, although Josh texted her whenever he had a little downtime.
She liked him. They had fun together. That sure seemed like a solid foundation for a relationship.
But she had to stop daydreaming, because one of the kids was waving a glue stick at a cat, who looked like she wanted to swat that glue stick out of the kid’s hand.
A little girl in a purple gingham dress walked over to Paige with her mask over her face. She said, “Meow” a few times and then bent down to pet Sadie, who seemed very interested in these proceedings but not enough to get close to the table where the kids were working. But Sadie loved people and loved getting her head pet more, so she leaned into the girl’s hand and started purring. Sadie had the loudest purr of any adult cat Paige had ever encountered, and this seemed to delight the little girl, who let out a little squeal of joy. Sadie tilted her head and shot her a questioning look.
Once the masks were done, the kids ran around the room meowing and growling at each other, which prompted the cats to dive under the furniture again, although an older tabby named Casey sat at the main table looking unfazed.
Still, the parents seemed happy, the kids were having a great time, and although their squeals and laughter made Paige think she’d go deaf if she did another one of these, the general feedback from people as they left was very positive.
“What do you think?” Lauren asked as the kids were packing up to go.
“I don’t know if I’m cut out to run events for kids, but this worked out pretty well. Maybe we could get some guests to teach craft classes. One of the ladies from Stitches or art teachers or something like that.”
Lauren laughed. “Not a bad idea. The kids had a good time, though. Three of the parents asked me when the next one is.”
“Will there be a next one?”
“Yeah, I think so. The kids had fun, Paige. That’s the most important thing.”
Paige surveyed the cat room. Two cats were creeping out from under one of the sofas, as if to check if the coast was clear. The tables Paige had pushed together to make one big table were littered with marker caps and broken crayons and stray bits of yarn. “What a mess.”
“I’ll grab a trash bag,” said Lauren.
* * *
Josh’s only day off this week was Sunday—thanks to Mr. Provost and his new client for making him come in to help him prepare briefs on a Saturday—but Paige was working at the Cat Café because it was the first day of her Cats and Crafts event.
The idea of going two weeks without seeing Paige seemed unbearable, so Josh reasoned he could casually drop by the Cat Café shortly after the crafts were over, maybe even on the pretense of seeing Lauren, who he knew was also working that day, and then he could get a dose of Paige before plunging into another crazy work week.
When he got to the Cat Café, he spotted Lauren near the counter. She looked happy but a little rattled.
