Right to Life

The cat sensed her fury instantly and began to snarl and spit, a small bundle of teeth and claws and though she'd never seen him angry before and it scared her, she held him away from her and let him writhe and struggle and she squeezed until the cat let go with an ungodly wail of abject fear and she realized what she was doing, terrorizing a small animal, taking out her anger at somebody on an innocent kitten. And heartsick, attacked by sudden tears, she dropped him to the grass.

He ran. But she couldn't let it go at that.

She had to get him back. Hold him, pet him, stroke him. Reassure him that it would never, never happen again and let him know how sorry she was and that she loved him.

So she ran too.

There was a woods behind her house and a brook, narrow and fast-running after a rain like the one they'd had the night before and the cat ran away from her back through the grass and scrub, the cat small but incredibly fast and nimble for its size and she couldn't catch him, he kept avoiding her, she was running as fast as she could and scaring him even more she knew by chasing him but her guilt was huge and overwhelming and she couldn't stop. Not until she had him home again, until she was sure he wouldn't run away for good from the monstrous awful thing she'd done and suddenly, there was the brook.

The cat ran along the stones by its bank but he was in full panic by now and he slipped and fell right in front of her eyes too far away to reach. She screamed and saw him try to scale the rock he'd fallen from but his claws could get no purchase and he began to drift downstream, his meow a piteous thing now tearing at her heart, an infant calling for its mother, the cat's eyes terrified, astonished, as he started moving fast away from her in the deep pull of the stream.

She plunged through the brush trying to get ahead of him. Trying to go faster than the stream, refusing to take her eyes off him for a second, unmindful of the branches scratching at her face or the brambles tearing at her legs but only watching as though her gaze alone would stop him from drowning. She saw him go under and come up again and claw at a rock and whirl in the current, scrabbling with his paws, trying to stay afloat and all the while his wailing in her ears and the sounds of the rushing stream and finally after an eternity it widened, slowed and she stumbled into the water and had him in her hands, Tiggy so cold and wet and fragile, she could feel his heart racing against her own chest as he clung to her for dear life and gone suddenly silent, looking every which way out through the woods as though he'd never seen them before. As though the whole world were new and frightening and she couldn't even say words to comfort him she was crying so hard, she could only stroke and pet him. And then the miracle, the absolute miracle happened.

At the steps to their porch he started to purr.

As this cat here in the box with her was purring.

She didn't know if it was this cat or remembering Tiggy's forgiveness that started her crying but they were the first tears she'd shed that were not in fear or pain for a very long time. She couldn't move much inside the box but she bent her knees until they pressed against the top and shifted sideways until her shoulder hit the right side and reached out in the dark and wiggled her fingers.

"Come on" she whispered. "Come on. Come here."

The cat fell silent. She was aware only of the throbbing burn and the unyielding wood and the dark until in a little while she felt the soft short silky fur beneath her fingers and felt it nuzzle and mark her with its lips and cool wet nose and the warmth of its body as it lay down to settle in against her thigh. The cat immediately began to purr again and she thought there was no better sound in the breathing world.

"There's a good girl," she murmured. "There's a good little girl. There's a girl."

And then another miracle occurred.

She smiled.

***

He dreamed that he sat in the basement on a folding chair with his ear pressed to her swollen belly. She was huge now, her navel protruding and he was speaking to the baby not to her. He could feel his lips move over the tight smooth flesh of her belly. She was naked, her arms and legs spread wide against the X-frame and inside her the baby was listening. Understanding each and every word but unable to answer him, not yet fully formed for speech.

That didn't matter.

He told the baby about the world, about its cruelties, its ability to slight even the most talented, the most honest, the most sincere the human race had to offer. He told it about war and killing and hypocrisy and foul tainted passion and the baby listened, understanding each and every word even if the mother didn't – couldn't – understand him at all. It was as though he were speaking a foreign language as far as the mother was concerned. That annoyed him. Then angered him. He was going to have to punish her.