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.
