The Cat is Still Alive*

You know that yowling that male cats do when they engage in a fight? Not the mrow, your mother lives in a garbage can, yowl, your sister has six toes, growl, your balls are teeny, that proceeds it, but the actual fighting part? Yeah, that noise that sounds like a feline getting killed.

Since we live so far out in the sticks, stray cats don't travel this far to cause trouble, meaning that we live blessedly unbothered by screaming cat fights. But on this night, as I settled into bed with the two dogs, mine and my friend’s, I heard no hurled insults, only a single loud scream from a cat. The cat. The dogs leapt up barking, as I fumbled around for clothes, glasses, boots, spotlight. Of course shining a light into the thick underbrush surrounding the house was futile. In the dark stillness I heard nothing, no scurrying, no stampede of coyotes, no deadly fisher cat expressing joy over a fresh kill. No beautiful gray cat responded to my calling.

I returned inside where the dogs were waiting, wanting to go out and see for themselves. Forget it, I told them. There might be something out there bigger and meaner and hungrier than you two.

Back in bed, I lay not sleeping, heavy hearted, contemplating the best way to tell my friend, upon her return from vacation, that she was now catless. After about an hour, while debating whether I should give up on the sleep idea and mourn the loss of such a great cat, or take a pill and become happily oblivious, I heard the cat door bang. No way. But there he was, completely unscathed, unfazed, happy, normal, all in one piece, NOT DEAD! I was so overjoyed to see him that I fed him again, in the middle of the night, in the hopes that he would be happily full and not go back outside to hunt a free meal.

Yeah right. This lean, mean, killing machine, able to catch a flying squirrel off the steeply slanted slippery tin roof in the dark of night by leaping right through the newly installed second floor window screen like it wasn’t even there, returning back through the window with his prey, for now, he lives to kill again.



*yeah yeah I know he should be kept in at night. But freedom is a personal choice and the choice is to let him live free which he could die doing. You know, the way we pansy humans used to be before we got so fear- ridden and paranoid about actually living that we do nothing but stay in and watch TV about how dangerous and unsafe life is.