Читать книгу The Third Cat Story Megapack - Damien Broderick - Страница 11

A LIMP DEAD CAT IN MY ARMS, by Michael Hemmingson [Poem]

Worf died in my arms.

That’s the name of my cat. Worf.

Yes, Star Trek: Next Generation.

Whenever the TV was on and someone

yelled, “Mr. Worf!” my cat, Worf,

would jump up, wondering who was calling him.

The problem was renal failure—drinking a lot of water

and peeing up a storm like a drunk on

a Friday night with too much extra

money for too much beer.

Then: he couldn’t stand, walk, or eat,

his legs and lower body shaking

as if he had Lou Gehrig’s Disease,

as he tried to move from the floor

to the litter box, giving up

and taking a painful shit

as he lay crying, cursing the fate of old age.

I thought about taking one of

my two-year-old daughter’s diapers

and putting it on him, reminding

me how my father had to wear adult

diapers in his last hours

in late Spring, 2011, finding out

the truth when I returned from

Mexico to see my child.

It happened again, Mexico and death.

I came home from a trip to Tijuana

and he was half dead, my cat,

like my father was two years prior;

my other cat, Poe,

did not understand

what was happening to her brother.

I didn’t think Worf would make it

through the night, in bed with me.

Death slept between us.

Twelve years ago, when he was eight weeks,

he was rambunctious and liked to bite

everyone, everything,

bouncing and leaping from

one end of a room to another.

In the morning I got him ready for

the Humane Society, a quick and peaceful end

of a good twelve-year run. I wrapped him in

a blanket and he was excited about

going outside; he went limp in my arms,

mouth open and eyes staring glassy at nothing,

the way my father looked when he killed himself with a gun

and I saw his face when the

Medical Examiner team carted him out of the

garage on a gurney, a hole in his temple

where he had put a .22 bullet like

a nail into a slab of wood.

I sat down on a green lawn chair

in front of my studio apartment

on the beach,

the grass not so green beneath my feet, yellow and

dying like all living things die.

The mail carrier came by to drop off a batch

of books and said, “Oh, your cat likes to lounge in the sun.”

I said, “Actually, he just died thirty seconds ago.”

The carrier peered closely at Worf and saw this was true,

muttered, “I’m sorry,” and quickly walked away.

Death is too much for the US Postal Service.

He must have had a heart attack, Worf.

I wasn’t sure if he was quite dead: he was warm

and I was certain I could detect a faint heartbeat

like the final clicks of ticker tape at the end

of a bad day on Wall Street.

The intake person at the Humane Society

said they would check for vital signs to make

sure, then administer the drug, the Big Sleep, and

prepare him for cremation. “We cremate twice a week

and once a month a group takes the ashes

out to the sea,” I was told.

I did not want to think of

Worf in some freezer with a pile of dead cats

waiting to be fried into dust and chips of feline remains

like the dead were piled up and burned

after the bombing of Dresden in February, 1945.1

I was asked if I wanted the blanket back.

No, no I did not want the blanket he died in.

I paid the $10 handling fee.

As a cute, black-haired kitten, he cost me $125

at the pet store twelve years ago.

His death cost me ten bucks and a blanket.

1. See Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 1969.