Heart Balloon Gift Cats

That Valentine’s Day, some ambitious entrepreneur came up with the imaginative idea to send cats as gifts to loved ones. He thought it would be charming to have the cat float up to the recipient’s home or office tied to heart-shaped helium balloons. The idea was wildly popular, and he sold many of his “heart balloon gifts cats” that were to be delivered on Valentine’s Day for a premium price.

Valentine’s Day came, and although the sky was clear and blue (thank goodness, not a rainy or snowy day!) a brisk northwestern wind was blowing that day, making delivery especially challenging.

The delivery persons tied the gift cats to their helium balloons and then tied a tether from the cat’s waist that the delivery person could hold onto to keep the cat from flying away or going off-track. A problem was noticed almost immediately. The gift cats kept swatting at the tether line, and some even chewed it through. Those cats were freed from the tether and went floating on their own way. The wind also pulled some of the gift cats out of the delivery person’s hands, also setting them free to float wherever the wind took them. It was a massive failure and people were frantically running all over the city, trying to catch the floating cats. The poor cats were terrified and unhappy. The smart entrepreneur knew he would be hearing from the ASPCA, and could be liable in countless lawsuits, so he quickly took his profits and ran for the hills.

Thankfully, the weather remained fair for a couple of days. The city was full of people whose only focus now was to rescue the gift cats. As the helium lost its loft, and the cats began to come down from the sky, there were watchers with eyes on the cats and people waiting to catch them. One cat actually traveled about 5 miles on the wind, but even that animal was safely captured. All of the gift cats were eventually accounted for, and since they had a gift tag on them, the cats were also distributed to the intended recipients, who were overjoyed to have them.

The so-called smart entrepreneur was caught and brough to justice. As part of his sentence, he had to serve 250 hours at the local humane shelter changing cat litter and caring for the feline population. He eventually adopted 8 of the resident cats, continued to volunteer at the shelter long after his community service hours were done and became a compassionate human.

No one will ever forget that Valentine’s Day of the “heart balloon gift cats” and how all the people of the city pulled together to make sure each cat was safe.

The image above is from Reba Spike on Unsplash

Copyright ©2025 Lisa Paul. All rights reserved.

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Melissa’s Fandango Flash Fiction Challenge #347