Ava and Taco Cat Read Online Free PDF

was all I wanted for my birthday—and that my birthday was tomorrow .
    Pip said, “Dad, let’s just do it. Let’s get him!”
    â€œWe have to talk to Mom,” Dad said, which meant he was at least considering it. Then he looked into Taco’s big sad eyes and whispered, “Buddy, this might be your lucky day.”
    Ava, Full of Hope

12/31
4:25 p.m.
in our car
Dear Diary,
    Believe it or not, we are in the car outside Dr. Gross’s clinic waiting for Mom! She’s getting off early because it’s New Year’s Eve. When she walks out, Dad and Pip and I are going to surprise her and drive her straight to the rescue center!
    In my almost eleven years in Misty Oaks, I’d never once been to the rescue center, but this will be my second time today and my third time this week!
    Dad said not to get our hopes up, but of course our hopes are up. Mine are sky-high! They are as high as Mount Everest, which Maybelle once said is over 29,000 feet high and the highest mountain in the world.
    While we sat in the car, Dad told us that Mom is the only person in Dr. Gross’s practice who doesn’t have a pet. I knew that Dr. Gross has a dog named Cowboy, and the front desk lady and her partner have three cats (one has just one eye), and one of the technicians has a ferret, and another has a canary, but I did not know that everybody has a pet except Mom.
    Right now, Pip and I are in the backseat, and while I’m writing, Pip is illustrating my H poem:
    H is for hammerhead shark.
    The great hammerhead shark is a scary beast.
    If it saw you at sea, it would think: What a feast!
    It is almost 4:30 p.m.
    In seven and a half hours, at midnight, I will be eleven.
    In one hour, will I have a cat?
    Gotta go! Here comes Mom!!
    Ava with Fingers Crossed

New Year’s Eve Night
Dear Diary,
    Mom said yes!!!
    I have a cat!!!
    His name is Taco!!!

    Ava

1/1
my birth day night
Dear Diary,
    Last night, I woke up and it was pitch black outside. I wasn’t sure if the glittery Times Square ball had or hadn’t dropped, or if it was or wasn’t my birthday. Was it a new year? Was I a new age: 11 on 1/1?
    All I knew for sure was that Taco was 100 percent mine !
    I have a pet cat!!!
    We brought him home in a cat carrier, but Mom said we had to keep him in the bathroom the first night. That didn’t seem very welcoming, but Mom said that when a cat is not “accustomed to a new environment,” it’s best to take things slowly, and that Taco would feel safest in a “small, confined space.” I was so glad we’d actually adopted him—and bought canned food and pet bowls and kitty litter—that I didn’t object.
    Right before I went upstairs, I told Taco that he was the best birthday present in the whole wide world. He still seemed scared (skittish?), so I didn’t pick him up, but I petted him and told him I’d be back first thing in the morning.
    Well, this morning, he was curled up on the bathmat. He’d eaten some food and used his litter box and even covered his P-O-O-P with sand, which cats do. Mom said these were all “good signs.” She showed me how to scoop out his dried doodies and shake off the sand and flush the P-O-O-P down the toilet. I told Pip it reminded me of the game we used to play by Nana Ethel’s creek called “Panning for Gold.” Pip said I was crazy, but I knew she remembered Panning for Gold as well as I did. (I like that we have a lot of the same memories.)
    Anyway, Mom and Dad had said they’d take me and my friends out for pizza for my birthday, but I didn’t want to leave Taco alone that long. So I called Maybelle and Bea and Carmen and Lucia and invited them to come here instead.
    Bea and Ben had just gotten back from vacation, and she said she’d be right over. She’s two years older than me, but we became friends last fall. That’s when she and I came up with the five Pip Pointers to help Pip