Are you ready to meditate with Corrie?
Climb up into your bed,
Try and stay still.
Make sure that you're all comfortable,
Snuggly and warm in your bed.
Tucker and Leo woke up from their nap.
The letter that Poe had left for Heidi was still there in the kitchen.
The cats had got plans to come over to Tucker and Leo and Mr.
Kitty's that day.
They were going to go out to the local duck pond.
Because it was winter,
The duck pond had frozen over and it was traditional where they lived that everyone skated and did different winter games on the pond.
Tucker could not skate.
Mr.
Kitty had been skating quite a lot since the weather had changed.
He was really,
Really good at it.
He'd been going with Tucker and Leo.
Leo really didn't like it.
It was just way too cold.
Why does the ice have to be so cold?
Leo would say the whole time he was there.
Tucker was absolutely horrendous at skating.
I don't know what it is,
But I just cannot get a hang of this.
I'm slipping and sliding all over the place.
It's absolutely very,
Very,
Very,
Very difficult.
And I don't just,
I just,
I just,
Oh,
You know what would be good?
You know what would be good?
He said the last time that they went.
If we got our friends,
Heidi,
Cherry and Vea to come and play and we could have a game of human bowling.
We could do human bowling.
I think that'd be so much fun.
I'm going to tell the girls all about it the next time I talk to them.
And then,
And then we'll,
We'll,
We'll,
We'll come and we'll play human bowls instead of skating.
Who wants to skate anyway?
Skating's just for,
I don't know,
People that aren't very fun.
Mr.
Kitty said,
That doesn't make any sense at all,
Tucker.
I'm fun.
Oh,
You're not,
Said Tucker.
You're not fun at all.
You don't like to play with me.
You don't like me to go anywhere near you.
You look at me all for the time that you're going to just like,
I don't know,
Break me in two or something.
You've got very,
Very aggressive eye contact.
And,
And it makes me a little bit nervous if I'm completely honest with you,
Mr.
Kitty.
I just want to be friends.
And most of the time you're really not friendly.
Mr.
Kitty said,
Just because I'm not gushing with friendliness and laughing all the time,
Just because I'm a bit more of a serious cat and my nature is a little bit more quiet and reserved,
Doesn't mean that I'm not fun.
Leo said,
I can vouch for that,
Tucker.
Just because you're not like goofy and crazy like you and Cherry,
Doesn't mean that you're not fun.
Tucker said,
Leo,
Leo,
Seriously,
When was the last time you did anything fun?
You're allergic to absolutely everything,
Leo.
If it's got fun in its name,
Leo come out in hives.
That's how it works.
What happened?
Oh,
We did this fun thing.
Oh,
What's wrong with Leo?
He's got hives again.
Leo said,
That's not very nice.
Tucker said,
But it's true,
Leo.
Leo said,
Well,
Yeah,
It is true actually.
Mr.
Kitty said,
I don't come out in hives and I'm fun.
Anyway,
Just because I like to skate and I happen to be good at it,
Doesn't mean it's for not fun people.
It is for fun people.
There's plenty of fun people out there in the world that skate.
Tucker said,
Okay,
Okay,
Okay,
But wait till you try human bowling.
Now that's fun.
When Heidi,
Cherry and Vea came over to the house,
Tucker almost forgot about Poe's letter in the kitchen.
He remembered just as they were all gonna leave the house.
Tucker said,
Oh,
Just a minute,
Wait a minute.
I totally forgot something very,
Very,
Very important.
He ran back in the house and then came back with the letter in his hand and gave it to Heidi.
Smell it,
Said Tucker.
Smell it,
It smells so nice.
Smells so nice.
It's from Poe.
Poe came over and he left it there and he said it was for you,
Just for you and no one opened it,
Did we?
Mr.
Kitty said,
Nope,
We didn't.
It says your name on it,
Heidi,
So we didn't open it.
But we'd all very much like to see and hear what it says because,
You know,
Poe being a poet and all,
I'm sure his letters are very,
I don't know,
Idealistic and romantic,
Maybe?
Mr.
Kitty did not sound happy about the fact that Poe was still in their lives.
He didn't mind him,
But he didn't really like him very much.
He thought Poe was a bit of a big head.
You know,
Too confident in himself.
But then,
When Mr.
Kitty thought about it,
He was a bit similar to Poe,
So he couldn't really say anything.
So if everybody wanted to be friends with Poe,
Then he'd best just be okay with it.
Thea said,
Oh,
How nice,
A letter.
Me would love to get a letter,
A romantic letter.
Oh,
That just sounds so princess-like.
I would love it if someone had feelings for me if they wrote me a letter.
She sent a glance to Mr.
Kitty.
Mr.
Kitty didn't catch the glance.
He was too busy scratching one of his ears,
Not paying attention at all,
In his own world,
Thinking about Poe and the competition of Poe.
Cherry said,
OMG,
Heidi,
That's like so nice.
No one's ever wrote me a letter.
I swear it,
I don't think I can remember any time in this entire lifetime where someone sent me a romantic letter.
Heidi said,
Well,
We don't even know what's inside it yet.
I know,
But it's obviously got to be romantic.
I mean,
Smell it.
It smells like a department store.
You know,
Like when you walk through a department store and it's got all those different aftershaves and everyone's trying to spray you with the different spray smells and you're like,
Oh,
All the way through the department store,
Smells like that.
Does smell nice though,
I must admit.
I'd be happy enough if someone sent me a letter that smelled like that.
So open it,
Find out what it says.
Much to everyone's dismay,
As they all stood around Heidi and stared at her intensely,
Waiting for her to open the letter from Poe.
She put it in her back pocket and said that she wasn't going to open it just yet.
Oh,
Said Cherry.
Jeez Louise,
Talk about,
Talk about torture.
Heidi said,
Right,
Come on then,
Are we going?
Um,
I'd rather just open it in my own time,
In my own space,
So let's just go.
Everybody chattered away as they walked to the local duck pond.
When they got there,
There was lots of different dogs and cats and lots of different people and kids skating,
Doing different activities on the ice.
It felt very Christmassy.
All the people that lived in the houses around the duck pond had decorated all the trees.
So they'd all got twinkle,
Twinkle Christmas lights on.
Some of the trees had got big,
Giant,
Oversized Christmas baubles on them.
Mr.
Kitty was carrying his skates over his shoulder.
He was that good at ice skating,
He had owned his own skates.
No one else had skates.
He told Vea though,
That she didn't need skates if she didn't want to,
And he would show her some moves on the ice.
He would show her how to spin and pirouette on the ice,
Just like a ballerina princess.
She was very excited about that.
Mr.
Kitty and Vea went over to their own part of the ice,
Where he could teach her how to spin on the ice.
In the meantime,
Heidi and Cherry,
Tucker and Leo,
All set up a bunch of plastic bowling ball pins that they bought especially for the game.
They were like big,
Giant,
Softish,
Plastic bowling ball pins and they'd lined them all up.
Tucker decided he was gonna go first.
Basically,
This is all you have to do to play the game.
You just start running as fast as you can on the ice and then you get to a line that they marked on the ice and then when you get to that line,
You basically just dive and slide.
Dive and slide.
That's all the talent you need.
Tucker was awesome at it.
Every single time it was his turn,
He knocked down all the bowling ball pins.
I knew I'd be good at this game.
This game is like the bestest game.
It's the bestest winter game in the entire world.
Leo tried it once.
He decided that running on the ice,
Walking on the ice,
Sliding on the ice,
Just being on the ice in general felt like trying to get up the wooden stairs at home or being on the landing at home with the wooden landing floors and he didn't like it at all.
He didn't like the feeling of it on his nails,
On his paws.
He didn't like the scratchy,
Scratchy feeling when he was slipping and sliding all over the place.
It made him get extremely nervous and stressed out.
So he basically just went to the side of the pond and watched the kids and other people skating and having a nice time.
So it was just Tucker,
Heidi and Cherry.
They decided to play the best of five.
They would count how many of the bowling ball pins they knocked down each turn they took.
All three of them had five turns each and whoever knocked the most pins down by the end of five turns each won the game.
Cherry happened to be very good too and so did Heidi.
They all had their own technique.
Tucker ran as fast as he could and then slid just on his bum all the way to the bowling ball pins.
Cherry ran as fast as she could and then she slid with all of her legs and her paws splurged out like a giant star.
Her back legs pointing backwards,
Her front legs pointing frontwards and she just slid and held her head up high so she didn't hit her chin on the ice.
So she was basically a belly slider.
And then Heidi was a side slider.
She ran as fast as she could and then she slid on her left side or her right side.
She mixed it up and took turns to see which was the best technique.
The right side was best for her.
She always knocked more down that way.
They were having so much fun.
In fact,
It got to the point where some of the kids got involved,
Some of the parents came along and played,
Some of the other dogs and the cats,
To the point where Tucker's idea about playing bowling with your body on the ice got super popular.
There was a big giant circle around everyone that was playing.
They were all cheering.
And when the kids got lots of points,
They all clapped for each other.
And when someone completely missed everyone,
Everyone were laughing and clapping.
It was just really,
Really fun.
Tucker,
At one point,
Said to Mr.
Kitty,
Because Mr.
Kitty and Vea came over to see what all the palaver was about.
See,
Now this is fun.
Skating?
No way,
I'll say.
But this,
This is like the bestest fun in the entire world.
They spent most of the evening there at the duck pond until it started getting too dark.
One by one,
Families and different animals left and went home.
Leo decided it was time for him to go home because he was cold and he wasn't playing on the ice and his body temperature had dropped a lot and it was time for him to leave.
Tucker said,
Don't go without me,
Leo.
I'm coming,
I'm coming.
Mr.
Kitty also went back to their house with Tucker and Leo.
Heidi,
Cherry and Vea went home.
When they got home,
They all brushed their teeth and then Heidi went into the bedroom while Cherry and Vea were messing around in the bathroom.
She pulled out Poe's letter and started to read it.
It was a very nice letter.
He said how impressed he was with her poem and he also explained that he got really nervous and that's why his poem wasn't so good.
He only got the first line out and then he acted as if that was the whole poem because he was embarrassed and he didn't want anyone to know that he choked up because he was just nervous.
But he was really impressed with Heidi's poem and he thought that she was definitely a natural at it.
He wanted to know if she wanted to go to a museum downtown with him.
She liked the sound of that but she was also very conscious of the fact that she had an uncomfortable feeling in her tummy.
She felt nervous and scared.
When she thought about Poe,
She liked Poe but she didn't want to let Poe think that she liked him like a boyfriend.
She decided that she didn't.
She decided that she was too scared for a boyfriend,
That she didn't really want a boyfriend,
That she was too young for a boyfriend and she was not ready for a boyfriend.
Boyfriend,
Just the whole sound of it sounded quite intimidating and yes,
She wasn't into that idea.
She was kind of like boyfriend and girlfriend with Lincoln,
The cat that she knew that was obsessed with CrossFit but it wasn't like serious boyfriend and girlfriend.
It was just more like friends.
Whereas with Poe,
And now that she was a bit older,
She was super nervous and because her tummy didn't feel good for her,
She took it as a sign that it was just too much pressure.
She didn't want to be involved with Poe like that.
She was okay with being Poe's friend.
Heidi was going to write Poe a letter and explain that she would definitely go to the museum with him but she wasn't interested in being boyfriend and girlfriend if that's what he was interested in.
She would much rather just be friends since they had so much in common and they had so many hobbies and their personalities were similar.
She would love to be his friend.
Heidi was so relieved when she wrote the letter.
She waited until Vea and Cherry had fell to sleep and then she wrote the letter.
And when it was finished and she put it in the envelope and wrote Poe on the front of the envelope,
She felt so relieved.
She was proud of herself for being honest.
She shared her feelings with Poe in the letter rather than just lying or making something up.
She was brave.
And she told Poe the truth that she didn't want to be boyfriend and girlfriend.
And she felt really good about that.
She also felt really brave for telling him the truth because she could have just not made something up instead.
But she felt relieved more than anything,
Hopefully that Poe would be okay with being her friend.
She wanted to be his friend because she liked him a lot.
She made plans in her mind to go and take the letter to the library.
She knew that she'd probably find him there one day this next week coming.
And with the letter written,
She put it in a sock drawer,
Climbed into bed with Vea and Cherry who were already fast asleep.
She snuggled in to her sisters.
And then eventually Heidi also fell to sleep.
The end.
