kalon name;; Heron
what do they collect;;
Heron grew up in an orphanage, and he's always known what it's like to live on the streets. As a child he would feed whatever scraps he could find to the local stray cats; he would forego his own meal in an attempt to curb their starvation, pet their skinny sides and give them gentle, taming names. Heron was not afraid of them and relentlessly patient. He would stretch out on his flat belly, ignoring the grumbling spiraling up to this throat, smiling affectionately at a skittish cat and just waiting. Eventually, inevitably, they would step closer and take daintily whatever he offered from his hand.
He got older and moved to a different big city and with meager skill and a great deal of luck, he managed a job and an apartment both. He found among these streets the same cats he'd known his childhood, shadows of housecats, slips of things that shied from him when he passed. He budgeted his paycheck carefully; and he took into his home as many cats as he could safely fit.
He has become something of a ramshackle shelter these days, plucking cats from the streets, healing them, fattening them up, reminding them of basic human kindness. He keeps those that are too different to find homes; and the rest he posts in newspapers, online, wherever someone will bend an ear.
His own collection has grown as the years wear on, as he finds more that are too sick, too old, too ugly. He has thirteen of them now, thirteen cats that will stay with him until they pass, for one is missing an eye and another a leg and a third a lung. He doesn't mind the steep bills because at night, when he climbs in bed, the cats crowd his feet and sides. The ones he keep gentle the new ones; they teach them to be patient, to be kind. Heron likes to think he is making a difference in the world, however small, in finding even one of them a family.