Road Kill

Posted on March 23, 2010 in Cats

Just at the point where Ridgeline Drive reaches its uttermost crest and begins to slide down towards El Toro, the blue SUV was stopped in the middle of the street with its lights on and the driver’s door open. On the left, beneath the street light, a woman was laying a gray and white tabby on the sidewalk. I looked then took another look, turned, and then parked my truck. I got out and rushed over.

“I didn’t hit it,” she said. “It was lying in the middle of the road, so I stopped and picked it up.”

“Does it have a collar?” I asked feverishly. She felt the neck. “Is it your cat?” she asked. These questions were coming because this corpse looked too much like the living body of my Boadicea. The frets of a surprise raced through me. I looked at the cat from all angles. “I think it might be. Yes, it might be, but I’m not sure.”

I lifted the limp cadaver in one hand and took it over to my truck where I laid it in the bed. Blood dripped from its nose. Its left eye blew out like a balloon, the collision having evacuated the orb from its socket. I checked it for familiar patterns. Wait, this paw isn’t right. Is it? There’s either too little white or too much white. The body seems too small. Is it Little Bo?

I laid the cat in back and called Lynn. The woman drove by. “Is it your cat?”

“I don’t know.”

Lynn had just arrived home, so I urged her to race upstairs. “Is the front door open?” I asked, sick that our other cat and our dog might be running loose. “Get inside, look for her.” Seconds of silence, then, “Here she is.” I removed the dead cat from my truck and laid it back on the street corner, in a tortellini crescent under the light where its true owner could find it.

When I got in the door, I looked for Boadicea, grabbed her and held her tight for a second. “What the fuck are you doing?” her body growled as she jumped from my hands onto the floor.