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NOTE: See the “Why We Chose to Publish” at the end for a full explanation.
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It was a dark, moonless night with a nip of frost in the air. The hour was late and most everyone was in bed, all except Ming and Ling, the Siamese cat scientists. In the basement of their house on Kitty Snicker Lane, a faint light glowed as Ming and Ling were hard at work.
They had long thought that there must be a better means of communication other than the letter, the boot and paw line, and long-distance meowing.
Ming and Ling had heard of another obscure man by the name of Alexander Bell, who was also working in this field. They discussed the matter between them and decided to contact Mr. Bell and share their ideas. With this grave decision reached, they retired for the night.
The next day they called on Mr. Bell and discussed their plan. Mr. Bell was very pleased with the progress they had made in this field. He agreed to share his knowledge with them.
After several weeks of work, their experiments began to take shape. One day while Ming was working with some electrical apparatus, a spark flew and his fur began to smolder. Mr. Bell then walked in and, not knowing what else to do, grabbed Ming and plunged him into a tank of water. This was one of the worst things that could happen because Ming, like most cats, hated water.
The laboratory was suddenly filled with yelps and howls, to say nothing of frantic attempts of Ming to save himself from this watery peril. The appearance of the laboratory after the accident would stagger the imagination. Needless to say, it took days and precious time to clean up the mess. When the laboratory was once more in reasonable shape, the work resumed.
After months of failures, their goal was finally reached. The telephone was now fact, not fiction. The great day had arrived to test their brainchild. Ming was on one end and Ling on the other, and the words that were to go down in history were spoken, “Meow, meow.”
After almost a century of progress, Ming and Ling’s influences remain in the scratching noises on your phone, which cannot be eliminated, and the sound of a ringing telephone became known as “Ting-a-Ling.”
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WHY WE CHOSE TO PUBLISH “Ming, Ling, and Alexander Bell Invent the Telephone”:
Back in the late 1950s when my sister and I were in grade school (around grades 3–5) our family owned two Siamese cats (pictured in the only surviving photo of them with the first of our two younger brothers). My sister and I wrote three fanciful stories about the cats, Ming and Ling, who were themselves brother and sister. Mom helped us some with the writing. The stories have survived the years as two original handwritten copies and one typewritten copy.
My younger sister, Diane, passed away very unexpectedly on November 13, 2025. We are publishing this story in memory of her, gone far too soon from the world. We hope our readers enjoy this amusing piece of flash fiction written long before flash fiction was a thing and kids’ lives were a little simpler.