This story is often remembered in our family.
Before the war, my grandfather had a stomach ulcer. The hospital was in the neighborhood, and his best friend, on a spring break, dragged his dying grandfather on his sandwiches all night long, saying:
Hold on, my friend, hold on!
I didn’t believe I would bring him alive. The ulcer turned out to be perforated, peritonitis began, the operation was long, heavy, but a miracle happened, the grandfather survived. When the war began, he was not taken to the front because of his disability.
Grandpa and Grandpa had four children. One boy died of typhus in the autumn of 1941. And in the winter, two three-year-old twin girls, Lenochka and Raechka, swelled from hunger and slept.
In the family there was a favorite cat Vaska. He properly caught mice and placed them on the threshold of the masters - it was that it was not a darmood. And at night he went to bed with the girls, lay between them, murmured and heated them with his warmth. The girls from weakness could not even raise thin, like fireworks, pins to lick the cat.
And then came the terrible day when one of the little girls, Raečka, died. My grandmother cried and cursed the war. The cat got stuck in the corner, realizing that something terrible had happened. In the morning, he brought a piece of black bread into the house and laid it in front of his grandmother: “Here is my prey.” The grandmother did not believe her eyes, and the cat shrugged at her feet, as if comforting her.
The grandmother mixed the bread in boiling water and fed the little daughter. By the evening, Lenochka smiled and was able to chew the cat with a weakened hand. The next day, the cat pulled the tail from the silk. My grandmother cried, praising him. She cooked a fish bouillon.
On the third day, the cat did not come home. He stole food from the German kitchen. They pursued him and asked for a row from the machine. The wounded cat was tied to a pillar and hanged a “PARTISAN” sign. They expelled all the inhabitants and warned that this would be the case with anyone who dared to bring food to the partisans.
But it turned out that Vaska was not shot, but only wounded. At night, slightly alive, Vaska somehow freed himself and came home. And the grandfather, in fear of death, hid it in a basket under the floor. For a week my grandfather tried to get out of the feeder. She whispered to the cat’s ear:
“If I survived, you will hesitate, cats have seven lives, hold on to a friend, hold on to a friend, the partisans don’t give up.
The wounds were severe and the cat did not survive. His grandfather buried Vaska outside the house.
This is how an ordinary village cat saved a little girl from starving death. It was my mother.
Olesya Afonskaya