The Dead Woman's Cat

The dead woman’s cat in the furrows of the garden does not let herself be picked up although hungry and thin after five days with the dead woman and a night in the rain. It has gone to join the other feral cats among the junk behind the house. To be outrageously ed. On my way to work I try to entice it with false friendship, guilt that the dead woman is dead. On my way home I buy a can of cat food but can’t find the cat. I let her go to her fate. Later that night I try again but there’s a tom waiting in her place. Maybe I could have saved her if I’d known her husband overdosed last week. Just maybe, no more. I ask the neighbors what happened to the kid. The kid lives with her grandparents, they just used her for welfare. I used to say Somebody dies every day, it’s normal. Walking through a residential part of town I frightened a cat into the street where it was hit by a car. The car drove on and the cat jumped high in the air over and over to escape the pain. I caught it and held it at the side of the road until it died and left it in high grass behind a house, sorry I couldn’t do more for it. A young boy on a bicycle stood nearby the whole time then rode silently away.