Franklin the Cat's Unusual Hobby: A Story for Kids
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This is Ria. Welcome to Little Stories for Tiny People. This is one of those stories, those rare stories that I wrote in a single day. This does not happen a lot. It usually takes a few days.

but it feels like magic when it does. This one is sweet and hopeful.

and perfect for bedtime. So cuddle up, and let's hear it. It's called Franklin the Cat's Unusual Hobby. Take it away, Murphy. Remember, there are no pictures. You have to imagine them in your mind. You can imagine them however you want. Okay, here we go. ♪

Franklin began taking things apart at three months old when he was just a scrawny kitten living in an alleyway with his mother, his father, his aunt, his uncle, and his older cousins in the middle of a city.

One afternoon, a child, toddling down the city street, hand in hand with his mother, perhaps overwhelmed and distracted by the countless scenes unfolding all around him, dropped something bright white on the sidewalk.

Franklin and his cousin, Amos, saw it happen, and Franklin wanted the item immediately. But when he made the slightest hint of a move, Amos nipped at his ear and hissed, Franklin, don't even think about it.

So Franklin waited until the sun disappeared from the sky and the city darkened when a small cat had a slim but real chance at venturing out and not being seen. "'I can go now, can't I? Please?' "'Ugh,' Amos murmured, looking up and down the street.'

There were still some people walking around, but nowhere near as many as during the day. Fine. Even at that young age, Franklin was stealthy in his movements. Every city cat is. He darted from the alley, snatched the object in his teeth, and returned to the shadows without anyone turning their heads. Once he had it back in the alley,

Franklin dropped his treasure to the ground. Amos didn't seem to think it was a treasure. "What's that? Looks like a crumpled paper." "It's a bird, Amos." Amos' eyes lit up and he leaned in to sniff at it. "That's the weirdest bird I've ever seen. But if it tastes okay, not the kind of bird you can eat."

Franklin said, shaking his head with a smile, "Look at those sharp creases. Check out those near-perfect corners. It was a bird, made of folded paper. A lovely origami crane. It was tattered from so many shoes trotting on it through the afternoon. It had been bright white and had since turned the color of days-old snow.

Franklin didn't mind. Someone had put time into making this thing. He admired that. Amos, thoroughly unimpressed, "Knock yourself out, kid," slunk deeper into the alley, leaving Franklin alone with his find. Franklin pawed at the bird and nudged it and pawed at it some more.

until he managed to unfold it into a single rectangular piece of crinkled paper. Hmm, how clever.

Franklin took apart many more things after that. Things really took off when he was three, and the family moved to the outskirts of the city, to a landfill, a place with an endless mountain of thrown-away objects. When he wasn't scrounging for food...

Franklin spent all his time foraging for interesting things to examine. Alarm clocks, light bulbs, shoes, those could be ripped apart seam by seam. Over one long weekend when he was four, he deconstructed a miniature car.

The other young cats were horrified. "Franklin, that was a perfectly good car." "We could have played with it." "My mom says you shouldn't break stuff." This happened a lot. Throughout his childhood, and as he grew into an adult cat, Franklin knew the other cats found him perplexing. His family was always supportive and loving,

But they didn't hide the fact that they didn't really understand his hobby. Franklin, that's... that's very interesting, honey. Looks like you got all the screws out. Every single one. Sometimes, as he picked apart something, like an old radio, setting each component neatly on the ground...

He wondered why he was doing it at all. What was the point? It seemed like a useless way to spend time, and certainly not something any of the other cats were interested in doing.

The others spent all of their time milling around the landfill, searching for scraps of food. They spent none of their time taking objects apart. They remarked on this often. Franklin, you want to come look for snacks? Or are you going to spend the day taking apart clocks again? He usually declined to answer such questions. Um...

I don't know, because the truth was, he'd rather take apart clocks. Once, he overheard two elder cats speaking about him. "I saw the strangest thing the other day."

It was a teenage cat taking apart a unicycle. Really? How incredibly odd. But it sounds like the stuff of youth. Too true. He'll likely grow out of it. But he did not grow out of it. And the older he got, the more he wished there was a reason for this strange specialty. But there didn't seem to be any.

Still, he kept at it every day out of sheer interest and curiosity and tried to accept that he was just a bit different than everyone else. There comes a time in every cat's life when he must determine his own path.

Sometimes that means continuing on the path set by his elders. Sometimes it means braving the unknown. And so, when Franklin came to be five years old, he stepped up to the crossroads of his life and thought deeply about which direction to take.

He was torn, really, because on the one paw, he loved how easy it was to find things with which to tinker from the landfill, but on the other paw, he did not love the landfill. It was a bleak place, filled with abandoned items, discarded memories. It wasn't the kind of place he wanted to spend the rest of his life.

There was something else, too. He'd come to be known as the odd cat. The eccentric one. The puzzle. He didn't want that to be the story of his life. What if he could start over? "I must go," he decided.

So, at five and a half years old, he said goodbye to his family. Oh, Franklin, I suppose I knew this day would come. We'll miss you so much. I'll visit. I promise you I will. And he set out to find a new home.

Soon enough, Franklin settled in a place out in the country where there were farms in every direction. It was peaceful out there, and instead of hills made of garbage, there were real hills. Beautiful hills, covered with meadow. Franklin had been raised as a scavenger, so it was difficult at first to find enough food.

He had to learn to hunt, which required a great deal more time and effort. But he got tips from the other country cats, who were friendlier than the landfill cats. The mice come out at dawn and dusk. You'll find them scurrying right over there. See that? You'd think they'd stop going there, but they're just not that bright. Thank you. But he mostly kept to himself. He had never been very good with other cats.

Plus, if he socialized too much,

His new neighbors might get wind of his hobby. You know that new guy, Philmont? I think his name is Franklin. Okay, same difference. Anyway, you know that guy? Yeah, he's scruffy and looks like his tail got run over a few times. Yep, that's the one. Well, he goes home at night and, get this, takes things apart. You mean like mice? Because... No, no, no, no. No, like clocks.

And radios. How strange. Let's go tell everyone immediately. Yes. Let's run and spread the word. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha.

Ugh, Franklin wanted to put that off as long as possible, hopefully forever. Maybe he could be known instead as an excellent hunter, if he ever got the hang of it. So after hunting during the day, he'd hole up in his new home, a drafty, abandoned barn, and tinker with whatever object he'd managed to find that week.

But there weren't that many objects to find out in the country, so one evening, left with absolutely nothing new to take apart, he had what you might call a lightbulb moment. Well, not exactly a lightbulb, but a lamp.

Franklin had found an old lamp the other evening, tossed in the back of a pickup truck outside a nearby farmhouse. He'd surveyed the rest of the truck's contents. Trash bags, caved-in bookshelf, stained rug. Hey, I know where this stuff is going. His old stomping grounds. The landfill.

Which meant, whoever had put the lamp in there wouldn't mind if he carried it home. In the quiet of the barn, he took apart the lamp. But soon, he had every piece lined up, one next to the other. And instead of the delight he used to feel at having deconstructed something, he felt bored.

He looked around for something else, hopefully something with lots of parts that he could tinker with, but there was nothing new. He had pieces of things, odds and ends, all over the place, piling up in corners, stacked here and there, but there was nothing else to disassemble.

And a new thought came to him then, in the dark barn, with just a single flame on a single candle to provide light. Maybe I've finally grown out of it. But then, a second thought crept up on the first, nipping at its tail. And that thought was, what if I put it back together? Like I said, a lightbulb moment.

For the first time, Franklin put together something he'd taken apart.

After the lamp was assembled, and looked good, except for its dented shade, he moved on to other things. He was able to reconstruct a picture frame, a wristwatch, a dresser, the hardware of which he'd removed, which needed to be screwed back on. He stayed up half the night, recreating the items he'd taken apart over the last several months. He loved every minute of it.

It seemed that from years of disassembling objects, he developed the ability to visualize which part should fit where, so he made very few mistakes as he went along. Not only that,

Over the next few weeks, he came up with better ways to build the objects. He came up with improved designs, taking parts from one thing and adding them to another.

Soon, there were interesting machines and appliances, toys and tools scattered around his barn. A skateboard with a wheel taken from a scooter, a teapot with a new spout made from a tube taken off an old hose. Everything was humming along. He'd upgraded his hobby into something more exciting.

And Franklin had slowly gotten better at hunting. Perhaps he would eventually develop a reputation as a hunter. Things were looking up. Until one day, he returned home early from a successful hunt to find an unfamiliar striped cat in his barn. Ah! Who? Do I know you? Uh, no, I...

I'm sorry. I was just looking around. Franklin scanned the room, taking in his odd assortment of things, suddenly seeing the whole mess in a new light from the vantage point of a guest in his home. Oh no. No, no, no, no. He could just picture it.

This cat would run off and tell all his new neighbors about his eccentric pastime. "The guy has all these weird Frankenstein things in his barn." "Look, um, this stuff? It's… well, it's not what it looks like," Franklin stammered. The statement made little sense because he had no idea what it looked like to this cat.

But he had no chance to explain, because, well, you know how cats are. The striped tabby raced past him, out the barn doors, into the growing darkness. Great. So much for starting over. He spent the next few days in the middle of a great fog.

In reality, the sky was beautiful and clear. That's the country for you. But Franklin's mind was cloudy.

And he braced himself for word to zip through all the neighbors and for them to start giving him the same puzzled looks he'd gotten back at the landfill. He's an odd one, isn't he? Takes things apart and puts them back together. Who ever heard of such a useless undertaking?

So pointless. What's it all for? In my day, we used things. We didn't dissemble them. I think you mean disassemble. Somehow, he'd traveled very far from where he'd started out, in the alleyway and the trash heap, with his cousins and the other cats puzzling over his oddness, only to end up

right back in the same place. And Franklin was correct about word traveling fast. The other cat

Did tell all the neighbors. See, you know that new guy, Felix? I think his name is Franklin. Right, right, the scruffy guy. The one who looks like he crawled out of a trash heap. Yeah, yeah, I know him. A few days later, there came the dreaded knock on his barn door.

Franklin had expected this, of course. Cats, as you may know, are extremely curious. Some might say dangerously curious. So for days, Franklin had been on pins and needles, waiting for some cat to slink up to the door and ask a bunch of nosy questions. But when the knock came, Franklin was asleep.

Huh? He lurched to the door, rubbing his bleary eyes. And in that state of grogginess, he completely forgot about his recent fears and swung the door open widely, putting his projects on full display to his visitor, an elder cat who wore small, round spectacles. Hello, cat.

"'Good morning,' Franklin said, putting up a paw to shield his eyes from the sun."

How long had he slept? It was then that he remembered he should have simply cracked open the door. It was too late. The cat peered past him. His little eyes focused on a wheelbarrow Franklin had reconstructed with one of the wheels swapped from a wagon. I... I... You what, Franklin?

There was nothing to say. The jig was up. He'd been found out. Soon the cats for miles around would be gossiping about... Excuse me, Frankie, is it? The cat said, interrupting the torrent of thoughts running through Franklin's mind. Uh, it's Franklin. Yes, Franklin. I was wondering if you might help me.

You see, well, I'm afraid I've shrunk in the last year, and I can't reach the pedals. Could you adjust my seat? Your seat? It was then that Franklin noticed the elder cat was holding the handlebars of a navy blue bicycle. Yes, I heard about your workshop.

It took Franklin a moment in his addled state to process what this elder cat had just said and to realize that the cat was not mistaking him for someone else. When that striped cat had crept uninvited into Franklin's barn, he had not seen a strange mess.

He had not seen a bunch of good-for-nothing, mismatched rubbish. He had seen a workshop. What a concept. As Franklin ushered the kindly cat into his barn, Of course, I can adjust your seat for you. It's no trouble at all. Oh, thank you.

I've been falling off it. It's been terribly embarrassing. He felt a lump form in his throat. His eyes even got the slightest mist in them. Because for so long, he'd been seen as, and had seen himself as, a ridiculous cat who spent countless hours on a pointless hobby. And only now, it seemed...

There might have been a point to it. All along. More cats visited his barn that week. At first, the requests were simple. Like the elder cats. Small fixes. I was wondering if you could repair the handle of my basket. I could do that. I actually have a handle that might go away.

As time went on, they wanted to hire him for more complicated jobs. He fixed broken gates, mended fences, he repaired a torn hammock, and installed a new walkway at an elder cat's residence.

He even had a visit from an enormous bullfrog, an exceedingly confident bullfrog who did not seem the least concerned that Franklin might eat him. He hired Franklin to create a custom rainwater catchment system that would provide water for his bathtub. Franklin never became known for his hunting abilities. He was always just average at that. Instead,

He became very well known as an all-around handy cat.

The cat who could fix anything, who could build anything. The farm cats were especially charmed by the fact that nothing surprised him. They could bring him any random object, and he knew immediately what it was, how it worked, how to take it apart, and how to put it back together. He had his landfill scavenger upbringing to thank for that.

After a while, Franklin started leaving his barn doors open in the late afternoons as he worked. Cats wandered by to say hello. "Any new projects lately?"

Oh yeah, take a look at this one. I can't seem to figure out the gears. The other cats, same as at the landfill, did find Franklin to be unusual. There was no escaping that. He was unusual. He was unusually curious and unusually talented. And finally, he was unusually useful.

You know, had you told me there would be anything useful about all my daydreaming as a kid, my doodling, my very active imagination, I would not have believed you. You just never know where your interests can take you. So find out.

Little Stories for Tiny People is written, performed, and produced by me, Rhea Pector. My in-house tech director, Peter Kay, runs my website and puts my stories on the internet for all of you to enjoy. Thank you to my Little Stories Premium subscribers for making it possible for me to keep sharing my stories with children around the world. If you would like to get more of the stories you love,

Access to Little Stories for Sleep, an exclusive bedtime podcast, and ad-free listening. Join or gift a subscription by visiting littlestoriespremium.com. Thank you to Murphy for the super important reminder message at the beginning. And thank you to the many premium subscribers who supplied sound effects used in this story.

Thank you to Henry, Holden, Aurora, JJ, Davis, Hazel, Ashera, Bella Rose, Linnea, Beatrix, Riley, Kian, Ava, and Isabel. And thank you, as always, for listening in.