My childhood sweetheart

She has, as they say, been around the block a few times.

One ear is kind of droopy, her hair is matted and worn thin, and she's really really old -- but I still love her a lot.

And for you smart-alecks in the crowd who wish to respond to this obvious set-up, no I'm not talking about Mrs. Toast. Rather, the object of my affection is shown below:


Blog world, meet Ms. Kitty Pom-Pom, the stuffed fuzzy hand puppet toy I've had since I was a very young child. I would drag K-P-P around with me everywhere I went, and of course always slept with her cuddled up right by my face. I am sure this is the root of my current love of cats.

I started thinking about K-P-P the other day after this post on Priestess of Nothing's blog about her Blue Doggie, which was inspired by Meander's question "did you ever have a teddy bear growing up?". For some reason, I never had a teddy bear, in fact I had very few stuffed animals at all that I can recall. I was a very industrious, mechanical little boy and was much more fascinated by toy trucks and other non-fuzzy things. Kitty Pom-Pom was the exception to the rule. (BTW, please don't ask how I came up with that stupid name for my little tiny tiger. I really don't remember, and all I can think to tell you is "kids say the darndest things.")

Yet all this time, K-P-P has stayed with me. I've moved often in the semi-nomadic lifestyle I lived for many years, and there were numerous occasions when, while packing a box, I came upon K-P-P ignominiously stuffed in a drawer and wondered, "why the hell am I still holding on to this bedraggled thing?" But, into the box she would go with a shrug, down the road to my next destination. She's about the only physical object I have left from my childhood, and after a while she became representative of those innocent days: throwing her away would indeed be throwing away a small part of myself. Even now, I can close my eyes, hold her close to my face, and remember how her company helped me to not be afraid of the dark shadows in my room at night when I was little. I can still hear the faint mumbled voices of Milton Berle, Sid Caesar and others from downstairs, on the old black-and-white television set my parents would watch for an hour or two after they put me to bed, and smell the decaf coffee my dad liked to brew up for a nitecap. That's a powerful legacy for a little stuffed tiger, but K-P-P wears it well.

So now, let me pass this thread on to my readers. Do you have a favorite stuffed toy from your childhood? Do you still have it? Pictures!