The piece of papery trash swirling under the car in front of me emerged from the shadow of the undercarriage. A black and white kitten stumbled and spun, stumbled and spun. I swerved to the right to avoid hitting it. I straddled it between my tires and quickly passed over it. In my rear view I could see it spinning and dazed as it walked and tripped off to the side of the road and down a grassy embankment. I felt awful. I was sad the rest of the drive home. I should have stopped. Doing so would have gotten me rear-ended. I couldn’t imagine that it wasn’t hurt or that it would survive very long. How did it get in the middle of busy road? Further on, I again thought I should have stopped. Still further on, I thought I should go back and look for it. Now, a day later, I can still see the way it half-walked, half-stumbled as though it were confused and being pushed around by a chaotic wind – never moving in a straight line, I can see the circles it made. It was so small and lost there in the middle of the road. Small and lost.
I remember a time when the cat’s fate was more certain. I was on my way to a basketball game. My father was driving. It was winter and it was dark. I could see enough to know it was a cat that we had hit. I know we hit it from the soft thud. I wanted us to stop but we kept going. I’m pretty sure I cried. I was mad at my dad as though he could have done something different. I didn’t want to play basketball.
Maybe a week ago, near the end of my morning walk with the dog, I saw a man in a neighbor’s back yard. He marched through the high grass. I thought he might have been inspecting something. He came around the back of their house, through the lawn, angry, almost storming or stomping. When he passed their front door he shouted, “all fucking night with this fucking cat again.” Or at least I think he said cat. His neighbor has an outside cat – orange like Morris from the 9Lives commercials. Seeing the anger in his walk I’d guess he meant harm if he could catch the cat – his neighbor’s cat. His voice stuck with me for a while. This reminded me of another time when I was much younger (still in kindergarten). A man was lurking around our apartment complex. I think I remember him outside our front window holding a pillow case. He said he was going to catch the cats and put them in a bag and throw them in the river.
I have days when I’d like to save all the cats – maybe make up for the ones I saw and couldn’t save.