Buddy

I was paralyzed, and the tears started welling before my consciousness could even register what I might’ve done.

The cat’s eyes were wide and its mouth was gaping and the teeth looked like a bunch of little, sharp needles. Even though it wasn’t hissing at me, I was still expecting my shoulder blades to touch. It laid on the floor of the kitchen, frozen, barely making a shadow from the light from the window above the sink. The cat looked really fucking dead.

I stared at it in disbelief. I didn’t know what to pray for. If the cat wasn’t dead and it suddenly jumped up and was alive, I thought it would start scratching and hissing at and biting me (I’ve never been a cat person). If it was dead, it would be my fault; I was the sitter after all, and I would seem guilty. A lose/lose situation. As I continued to search for the rising and falling of the plateau of its stomach, I was terrified to find it absolutely and perfectly still.

Tears streamed down my face as I tiptoed my way around the dead cat, too silently (death is so much quieter than I thought it ever would be. I wished something loud could’ve engulfed that moment). I started faster towards the car, grabbing my phone and calling my dad. He told me later that I sounded like I had just been in a car accident; I felt as if I might as well have been in a car accident.

He handed the phone to Dr. Hayley, who told me to hang on, she has a friend coming to deal with the cat. Should I let the dogs back in again? No, they’ll walk all over the crime scene in the kitchen. I forgot to even feed the dogs. I walk over to food by the laundry room, but then think that I should probably put a towel over the cat, out of respect? Out of my disgust? Out of guilt? I struggled to find a dirty towel in this laundry room, unaware of which baskets were the designated dirty baskets and clean baskets. I think I took a clean towel.

There are 3 kids, I’m pretty sure. Every time I go to babysit for them, there are always a few friends over and I kinda never know which ones I’m getting paid for. Everyone, including my own family, was at a baseball tournament in Baton Rouge. I liked helping Dr. Hayley out, especially since her son was best friends with my little brother on the travel baseball team. And I really only ever had to help take care of the dogs; let them out and feed them. I barely ever saw the cat – until it died in front of me.

Ms. Mindy and her tall son entered through the kitchen door, and she mothered the cat and I for those 15 minutes. I didn’t look when she stuffed the cat’s stiff body in the trash bag, mostly because I knew it would be stiff. She told me not to worry about the dogs and that I should just go on home. After almost 10 minutes of frantically looking for my keys, I grabbed them from a clean pile in the laundry room and sobbed all the way home.

I thought in the car of how the kids would probably blame me for the death of their beloved cat. I mean, I’m pet-sitting. It's like if I were babysitting and the baby died; natural causes! It's not my fault, of course, but I’m still the one watching the kid.

I cried to my sister, who, in response, giggled at the thought of me finding a dead cat. I screamed in rage that it wasn’t funny and that this was the most traumatic thing to happen to me in the last six months. But, I did indulge in the thinking that allowed this situation to be humorous from an outside perspective: of course I, out of all people, would find the dead cat, and of course, the cat would choose that time to die, when I was pet-sitting. It was so vaguely sadistic, on the cat’s part and mine.

As I continued to tell the story of my finding the dead cat in the following days, everyone seemed to find it funny, even the kids who owned the cat. My dad later told me that the kids didn’t even like the cat and were borderline happy it was out of their hair. When he said this on the couch in our living room, I thought about the cat’s eyes looking into the void of nothingness and the bugs that could’ve made their home in its mouth if I hadn’t found it as soon as I did. And the bugs that probably did find their way in its mouth, and the way they fell out of its mouth when the body was moved into the trash bag.

I think I was the only one who shed tears for this cat, which I didn’t know the name of. This cat that nobody cared for with its mouth open, family of 5. And even those tears were out of fear of blame, not grief.

Then again, I’ve never been a cat person.

That next Sunday, I went to mass with some of my family; it was Dad’s weekend, so we went with him. Going to church, sitting there listening to the man preaching to me, didn’t have the allure that it did when I was in high school (and neither did the beige glow of the modern architecture of the early 90s).

It didn’t help that I also hated the priest; he loved to yell at the congregation about singing louder, responding louder. Not many other things make me want to leave the whole religion faster (but there are a few others).

As my sisters and brother and I did the rehearsed choreography (up, down, up, kneel, repeat), I compiled a mental list of things I had to pray for: parents, sisters, brother, grandparents, aunts, uncles, a good school year, Simone, and now that damn cat. 

Sometimes during the homilies, this fun new thing happens where I have to hold back tears. Going to church felt like reopening a scab that had just healed up. It’s not that I don’t want to pray anymore; the gap between us is just too big now. Though I do, in fact, praise God for the masks we have to wear that conveniently cover up the tear trails on my cheeks. It’s the same tear trail that was taken when my parents told my sister and I that their marriage had officially failed. The same trail that was taken when Simone hung herself. But those things happened about six months ago.

I lowered my head in my hands and cowered in the corner of the pew while I prayed for the soul of the dead cat (whose name was apparently Buddy).

Spring 2022