Can Kadoaties Read?

     My name is Jayne. I'm a Kadoatie.

     It took me months to learn to associate words and signs on paper; several weeks of looking around me, trying to figure out what those black marks on the walls of my little cage mean. But at last, after all this time, I learned to read, and to write as well; so I'm carving these words with my nails in the wooden walls behind the paper to let others know my story, hoping that it will entertain some other Kadoatie who'll have to stay here long enough to learn to read as well.

     It is a nice place, the Kadoatery. Cages are wide and comfortable, and every day a janitor comes to clean up and replace the wallpaper. Usually they use old copies of the Neopian Times, and this has been fundamental in my learning process, since every day I had something new to read: I now know lots of things I never imagined could even exist.

     There is always good company, I often chit-chat with my fellow Kadoaties, and sometimes exchange a few words with their owners when they come back from their vacations and take back their petpets. I made a lot of friends in all these months; now that I can write I wonder if I should send them cards to be read by their owners - as far as I know, I'm the only Kad able to read. Oh well, I'll think about it once I'm out of here.

     Tomorrow my owner is coming back from his own long vacation. I remember him telling me about how excited he was for the lucky winning, a complete Neopia tour! He thought about bringing me as well for the trip, but I was wise enough to say not to worry... I'm not much of an adventurer, and frankly getting all that cold in Terror Mountain or risking to get my tail dipped in Moltara's lava is not a perspective I like so much. So we decided that while he was away I would have stayed here. Sometimes I missed him, and I can't wait to see him tomorrow... but I would have never set foot around the Turmaculus!

     Sure, the day he left I felt lonely, but I tried to look courageous and casual, I did not want to appear all trembly and sad before all the other Kadoaties! It was my first time in the Kadoatery, and now that I'm a little wiser probably I would have not been so proud and fiery... however, soon I started making friends with my fellows around, and I started to enjoy my life here.

     Then, I got hungry. And being hungry remembered me of my owner, who has always been so kind... soon a shadow of sadness came upon my mind, and when the Kadoatery's staff asked me what I would have liked to eat, I suddenly remembered one episode of when I was a little Kad.

     My owner had just met the Soup Faerie wandering around the Neopian Market, she was gathering some stuff for her soups. She was quite upset with herself, also: she needed some Plum Pudding for a recipe she found in an old book, but was not able to find it in the shops, so she bought a Wocky Plum Pudding... too late she remembered that the two foods taste completely different - the Plum Pudding does not contain any plum!

     Now she vas very late, and had no time to go back to the Market looking for a Plum Pudding... so my owner kindly offered to do it in her place. She was so happy to hear that! After a long shop-by-shop quest, my owner finally found the Medieval food, and brought it to her house - perfectly in time for the soup preparation. She was very grateful, and gave the unused Wocky Plum Pudding to my owner as a big THANKS. And he gave it to me that very evening, and boy, was it a GREAT meal!

     So, I asked to the Kadoatery's staff some Wocky Plum Pudding, thinking that eating it would make me less lonely. Well... it turned out this was not the simplest request. They had nothing like that in their cupboards, so they asked to the Kad-lovers coming every now and then to try to make my wish come true. There are a lot of people here that just love Kadoaties like me, and enjoy feeding us with everything we like - we sure are lucky petpets. But as days passed by, I noticed that, while most of the petpets sooner or later were made happy by some visitor, everyone looking at those three words ("Wocky Plum Pudding") scowled or - in the best case - said they were sorry.

     Day after day, I felt more and more sad: why almost every Kadoatie sooner or later had his own favourite meal apart for me and few others?

     I had to find a way to distract me; but watching the people passing by and feeding other Kads did not help. So I started looking at the walls of my cage, and noticed these strange symbols on all the surface. There was not a precise pattern, although there were not so many symbols, and many combinations recurred quite often. And every day, after the janitor changed the wallpaper, there were new sheets. They were almost mesmerizing, but I did not have any clue on what they really were - I only thought them as ornate paintings, until one day all changed.

     The janitor, just after letting me inside again after the wallpaper change, stopped by, looked carefully at some big symbols just on the front of the cage, and said "Acquiring Avatars! ... well, since I'm not so good with them, maybe I should take that paper under your paws, eh, Jayne?" and with a booming laugh he went to the next cage.

      Acquiring Avatars. So, those big symbols on the top of the sheet meant "acquiring avatars". How? I spent all night trying to understand - and I could not. And I knew that the day after the wallpaper would be changed, and I would lose the chance to understand. Therefore I set my mind, and swore I would have learned, no matter how long it would have taken. Being a Kadoatie has its own advantages, one of which is possessing a nice set of sharp, retractile nails: i easily tore off the part of the paper I knew meant Acquiring Avatars, and managed to stuff it between two planks on the ceiling.

     So, day after day, I tried to associate symbols and words, words and symbols, looking also at all the other sheets of paper I had on my walls. It took me weeks - but I had a lot of time, and nobody to interrupt my learning process: not a single Neopet with a Wocky Plum Pudding came. Meanwhile, most of my friends went back to their homes, new ones arrived, but no one shared my willingness to learn to read... that's probably why Kadoaties won't conquer the world (while other Petpets actively try, look at Meepits, they can read, draw and calculate even better than prof. Clodbottle).

     Nonetheless - I made it, in the beginning I was barely able to spell, now I can read all the papers of my wall in less than one morning, and that's sad because I have nothing left to do in the afternoon, but tomorrow I'll be back home and I'll ask my owner if I can borrow his copy of the Neopian Times. Once you start reading, you can't stop enjoying it.

     So goodbye Kadoatery: I had a good time, good friends, but tomorrow I'm getting back home. I'm leaving my memories on these walls, and if ever another Kadoaties will be able to read these words, remember: don't ask for Wocky Plum Pudding, the Neopian Times says there are a couple of them left in all Neopia. Had I read this before!

      * Note of the reporter: these words have actually been carved in a Kadoatery's cage by some sharp object that could really be a Kadoatie's nail. Currently a Kadoatie named Jayne can be found there in another cage, and she is asking for a Wocky Plum Pudding: she claims she can not read, though, but you never know when these Petpets are kidding... and more and more of them are asking the same kind of food. Coincidence or the beginning of a literate Kads generation?

The End