Cat

Tonight, after work and a short trip to pick up some essentials, I made the usual turn onto my street to come home. This time, as I crested the hill, I found my dad walking across the driveway with a shovel. Though it had been dark for some time and an irregular drizzle fell every few minutes, I thought that he was just doing some nighttime yard work. I pulled into the driveway, where mom was standing in front of the opened garage door watching me pull in. I parked and stepped out of the car next to mom.

"Somebody hit a kitty and he's taking it to the back," she told me, with a curled lip and a look of dismay.

I looked toward the side of the house just in time to see the last of dad disappearing into the dark. Then I turned my head to the right and saw a large, dark spot on the road.

"Is that what that is?"
"Yeah."
"Is he burying it or chucking it?"
"Probably just chucking it."

I made my way to the side of the house and caught dad on the way back from the backyard, carrying an empty snow shovel.

"Did you bury it?"
"No, I just threw it."
"Where?"
"I just stood at the edge and chucked it."
"Well I'm gonna bury it."
"Then you'll have to do it in the morning. You probably won't be able to find it."

I walked back to my car, grabbed a flashlight out of the glove box, then went into the garage and took a shovel that was leaning against the wall. I made my way to the backyard and walked down the slope at the edge of our backyard into the huge field of rocks and small, gnarly shrubs and sticks that extends outward behind our house.

I darted the flashlight across the rocks and bushes looking for anything that resembled a cat. It didn't occur to me until a minute into my search that I was likely to find the limp, broken body of someone's pet. As small a thing as it may seem, it was something I hadn't prepared for. I just couldn't stand the thought of being thrown out into the dark of night and left to decay in the soft rain. For the first time, holding the shovel in my left hand, I realized that I was a gravedigger. Standing in the dark out in the middle of a barren field, a small light began to glow at the bottom of the empty, abysmal feeling I had inside of me since mom had told me about the cat.

The drizzle started up again, but I spent several more minutes walking around in the dark searching between the small bushes. Every now and then a dark spot would appear on the ground. But as I walked toward it, I realized that it was just the shadow of another bush against the beam of my flashlight.

I turned to search the line of small trees and dense brush that acted as a boundary between our yard and the vast, barren field of rocks. I shined my light underneath every pine tree, hoping that dad's throw hadn't been so strong and might have just rolled the cat to the bottom of the slope. But after several more numb minutes of looking, I found nothing. I ascended the hill to check the line of brush from the other side. Still nothing.

I walked up the hill back toward the house to see a silhouette against the light shining through the back doors. As I came closer, I realized it was mom, waiting to see if I had buried the cat.

"Did you find it?"
"No, I have no clue where he threw it."
After a pause, I started up again.
"I just don't understand why you wouldn't bury it. It was probably someone's cat... it was a living thing. And if nothing else, why would he just leave it out there so the dogs and coyotes could come behind our house and eat it? I just don't see why you wouldn't bury it."

Mom turned and went into the house through the back door and I walked back down to the driveway. I put my flashlight back in the glove compartment and leaned the shovel against the wall in the garage. I closed the garage door and made my way up the stairs. I went to my room and opened the door to check, but she wasn't there. I walked back across the house and found my sister on the computer.

"Where's the cat?"
"I dunno."

I walked over to my parent's room and opened the door. There she was, sitting on the floor. She stood up to greet me as I reached down and petted my cat.

Now I sit here in my bed and listen to a steady patter against my window. Somewhere out there is a cat, left in the rain.