It came first as a black blur.
Only when I heard the thump on the front of my car and the chaotic scream from below did I realize that the blur had four legs and that the shriek resembled the panicked hiss of a cat.
It was night and this particular street had little to no lighting, with condemned and graffiti-decorated buildings to boot. It was the kind of street populated only by the occasional junky sleeping on a stoop.
I had tried to swerve, and while I managed to get the wheel out of the cat’s way, the cat’s head bashed against my car’s bumper. My car’s underbelly must have knocked it around before releasing the animal again to the street.
In the rearview mirror, I saw the cat flopping its way to the gutter, like a fish out of water.
It was a one-way street, but I hit the reverse anyway. I went back half a block, and saw the cat there, lying on the gutter, misshapen, hissing in pain. I saw lights behind me. The street was narrow, and the person driving that car would not wait for me to perform heroics.
Besides, I didn’t want to. The cat blood would have made a mess in my car, and I wouldn’t have known what to do with it. I wish I could feel bad about this, but I don’t. But why else am I writing this?
I went around and drove back up to the spot. I looked down at the gutter and saw it. A small pool of blood had formed beside its face; one of its eyes had a crimson coat; its mouth lay agape. This was a street cat if there ever was one: squalor-thin, its fur black with grey patches all over—red smudges, too.
It was frozen.
I’d killed a sentient being.
But I guess everybody needs a first time.
Don’t get me wrong—this is not a “this is what real men do” thing. But I think this is the kind of episode you have to be prepared for when you live in a city. Just one of the many small gifts of urban Puerto Rico—the random misery that could hit you at any moment, regardless of how careful you are. The hoodlum might rob you and might be coked up enough to give you chrome to the head. The policeman, in a bad mood, might decide to shoot you to bits. The bullet thrown to the air may land on your beautiful daughter’s head.
Your decision to go to McDonalds suddenly takes on a cosmic importance.
And you think you’re lucky, but you’re just as susceptible as the cat.
People often use the meteorite cliché when talking about chance. But we don't need a meteor. A meteor can’t win against the man who puts a blowtorch unto his family. Or against the disgruntled man who decapitates and dismembers the queen. Or against that lost bullet in the sky, dipping its way from the stratosphere into a fallible human head.
Don’t talk to me about meteors. It’s the bullets that hang like a black mist over us, willingly plunging.
But what the fuck. I was just talking about a dead cat.
I think this develops very nicely. The brevity of the discussion of social chaos is just right, and the way it is situated in the cat story feels like a genuine experience of the profound. Something small and concrete acts as a trigger. Not that running over a cat is small, but nevertheless.
ReplyDeleteIt is a bit awkward for me when you use the word feline instead of cat, and then use cat. "Feline" doesn't complement the speaker's tone or attitude.
Emma,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the suggestion! I noticed that it did sound strange.
Definitely easy to read. The closing lines sort of take away from the power of the piece though. The image I want to be left with is that of a bullet falling down through the night sky. I guess I'm a sucker for aesthetically pleasing writing, but you manage to use it without it feeling fluffy or melodramatic. I would have the last sentence in this post be
ReplyDelete"Or against that lost bullet in the sky, dipping its way from the stratosphere into a fallible human head." Leaves things a bit up in the air (heh). Asking the reader a question here is jolting because the piece had just acquired a literary feel that transcended you and the cat. Perhaps defensively you bring us back to earth with "But what the fuck. I was just talking about a dead cat". This if fun to read. I think "Ecclesiastes 9:11" could benefit primarily from omission.
This was very good. I think you did a great job at describing the dieing cat, though a little gruesome, I could completely imagine it. I think there was potential for it to be two completely unrealted things that you added together, but it turned out to be really well done.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing I would change would be to take out the last three lines. I agree with pat, I want to be left imagining the bullets flying through the night sky. That image is profound and would be a great place to leave off the reader.
An epigraph might be helpful ("And time and chance happen to them all."?) for those of us who don't know our Bible verses. The action is out of chronology, and the description in the beginning (black bur, chaotic scream) is abstract and therefore distances us from what has happened. You want to communicate your confusion in the moment without creating confusion in the reader. Set the scene and try being direct and straightforward: On a poorly-lit city street in Puerto Rico one night, I ran down and killed a stray cat. Describe what happened as clearly as you can, then explore the feelings, the attempt to make some sense of it. You seem to be coming to the element of chance as a subject--in revision perhaps introduce this in the beginning: how did you chance to be driving down that street at that moment? What different choices and events aligned to make that happen?
ReplyDelete