Peppy Kitty

This is Peppy Kitty. Clearly a child of the eighties, she was part of a series of plush animals called Yum Yums that were each printed (and scented!) with a different type of candy. I have clear early childhood memories of burying my nose in her belly and inhaling the intoxicating peppermint scent. I don't know her age for sure; she was a gift from my grandmother, and I think I got to pick her out at the store, so I was probably around six or seven. When I was eleven, I took her on a family vacation to Hawaii and I accidentally left her on my bed on our last night at the hotel - blending in with the white sheets she was swept up by room service and sent down the laundry chute. I was absolutely devastated - I remember the aching feeling in my chest. I cried myself to sleep night after night. My dad wrote a heartfelt letter to the hotel imploring them to look for Peppy Kitty and send her home, and somehow, miraculously, she was found - I'm very grateful to that unknown hotel laundry worker who put her aside, realizing that she must be special to someone. After an agonizing couple of weeks of waiting for the overseas mail, she was restored to me.... rather flat. They mailed her to the mainland in a flat-pack envelope, and when she arrived she was a pancake of a cat. Since then I've tried to hug her back into her original shape. She has never quite regained her original chubbiness, and the peppermint oil scent is long gone - her hair and her lip-licking tongue and the glitter on her peppermint print are all long gone too - but I'll always love her.