Nine Lives
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2,225
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Suicide | Death | Depression | Graphic Depictions of Violence | Animal Violence | Child Violence
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A cat wants to commit suicide but must end all nine of his lives before he can truly die.
I lost my first life in a brawl with an alley cat. I call it a brawl, but really, this cat was much older and stronger than me. It wasn’t much of a fight. Why this cat had the big idea to fuck with a helpless kitten is beyond me. I was too weak to do much except scowl at the guy. I wish I could laugh and throw out some silly adage the humans are so fond of, like “you should’ve seen the other guy” or “it’s not as bad as it looks.” But unfortunately, the other guy ripped open my back leg, and it was twice as bad as it looks, even now. Looking back, if anyone had the right to fight to the death for alley scraps, it was me. And if I had had the strength and worse luck, I would have.
I lost my second life to two teenage boys. Their aim wasn’t very good, and they needed the practice. Glass bottles shatter more deliberately, more willingly, than bones, but bones still give nonetheless. I don’t know why I expected mine to be any different. The glass tore through my right ear before mercifully lodging itself in my ribcage, and my heart raced my blood to cross the afterlife finish line. It appears, however, that Death has a funny bone, and yet another to pick with cats. I don’t know which of my ancestors crossed him, but I curse that cat for my rotten luck. Nine lives can’t be anything but a curse.
That was thirteen years, nine months, and four days ago.
I was thin, with grooves in my spine like mountain peaks. My shoulder blades jutted out of my back like the great spikes of an ancient amphibian. I slunk through the alleys and crept across rooftops and slid down gutter pipes like a ghost, though avoiding the attention of unsavory beasts (like myself) was near impossible. If others were somehow managing avoiding the freaks and delinquents, I had not met them. If that sort of a ghost did exist, they were doing a wonderful job of one I seemed so keen on fucking up: I couldn’t stay out of trouble for the seven lives of me.
Most incidents just ended with a sizing up and a hiss. Physical encounters were rare, but when they did occur, Sphinx have mercy. It’s astounding I managed to make it out with seven lives intact.
Back then, I thought I was unlucky. I used to think to myself “if only I could catch a break, then I could be happy.” I wanted something different, somewhere mild and polite and safe.
Some older cats I’d encountered told stories of the suburbs. A hundred driveways on an endless street, each lined with yellow daisies and fresh cut grass, leading up to a house of magnificent stone and wood. Roves of people lived in each house, and many of them considered cats friends, even family.
It only took a few months of city life to decide it wasn’t for me. Streets with bisecting strips of magnolia trees filled my dreams, the shelter and silence of a shingled roof over my head, a house with enough space to explore for a lifetime. Weeks of hungry days, night after lonely night interrupted by hateful humans and cruel cats kicking me out of the hole I’d crawled into for an hour’s rest, quickly brought the decision to the forefront of my mind. I would leave the city and never look back, even if it killed me, because this city was going to kill me one way or another. It was only a matter of time before another kid backed me into a brick wall, or a Tesla wheeled over me with their silent goddamn engines and drivers with piss poor eyesight, or a dog decides he’s trading his kibble for kitty. Attempting to escape the city life might cost me a life or two, but if I wait, it’ll only get harder with each life I leave behind.
I was fortunate to make it to Ravensburg, a “well-off” neighborhood west of the city, with the same seven lives I had in stock when leaving the city. I didn’t learn until several months after my stint as an alley cat that I spent the first few months of my life somewhere in West Phoenix, Arizona.
The cats from the alley would’ve called Ravensburg stately. It was exactly the neighborhood alley cats dreamed of: green grass lawns, red mulch gardens, three levels of reverent house stretching ambitiously skyward. The humans who inhabit the houses are no different. Clean-shaven men, flouncy smiling women, and their lovable bunches of rambunctious kids. They were truly a sight to behold compared to the grubby kids and filthy adults who roam the shadowed areas of Phoenix.
The biggest difference between the streets of Phoenix and the suburbs is the traffic. It was both easier and more difficult to go unnoticed, taking care of myself became entirely new. I had to learn a new set of survival skills. On the streets, all I had to do was wait outside any restaurant and get to the scraps before some other poor fellow. In Ravensburg, I had to beg for my food, which was mortifying for someone like me, who was used to fighting fang and claw for my meals.
I could never find the energy within me to explore more of the neighborhood, not in those first weeks. I ate a steady diet of field mice and whatever rich people tossed to the curb, and neither of those delicacies were particularly easy to come by. I had to toe the line between desperation and indifference. If I was seen hanging around too often, the humans would think I needed them. Even though I did need them, more than I care to admit, I knew that I couldn’t appear to require their services, or else I’d become, in their eyes, just another helpless, mangy stray. I needed to become a house cat, not an alley cat. And to do that, I needed the humans to see me as a house cat.
The time I didn’t spend fighting to keep myself alive, I spent grooming. My fur needed to be pristine, fluffy, and attractive. I needed the humans to want to approach me, to stroke my fur from head to tail.
The next difficult part was picking a family. For a few weeks I tried with an old couple who looked nearly on the brink of collapse, but they barely paid me any mind. Honestly, I think they might have had trouble sensing me. I suppose it’s a good thing I didn’t end up with them, considering they’ve both been dead for years now. I don’t remember when they passed, only that I looked out the North hallway window, as I have a thousand times before, and the old man was not knelt in his garden bed, straw hat shading his neck from the brutal sun, and in their Mazda’s typical parking space, there was instead some sporty little white car with no roof.
I can’t fathom choosing, deliberately, a car with no roof. For the number of hours I spent dreaming of a roof over my head, a safe and warm and dry space to sleep, the idea of choosing something inherently unsafe, intentionally exposed to the unforgiving wind and sun, was beyond me.
There is so much the humans do that I cannot wrap my head around.
As far as I ever saw or heard, I was the first and only feline that had ever inhabited 4674 Wolliper Way. The father didn’t seem too fond of me when I first started hanging around their yard, sniffing the air that wafted from the perpetually open window over the kitchen sink. I swear they did it on purpose to taunt me, and frankly, I’m astounded that other cats weren’t hanging around from the smell, either. It seemed to permeate the whole street, maybe the whole neighborhood.
The Santiagos were the picture of normalcy. A gorgeous mom who always seemed to be hanging about the house, rushing from room to room inside or lounging on the porch with a glass of lemonade, watching her little girl kick a soccer ball to the neighbor boy. The dad was always coming and going, I suppose to a job during the day, but not every day, and rarely two days in a row. His schedule was impossible to pin down, despite my efforts. I only knew that if I saw him leave, he would not return for a long while, sometimes not until the sun had dipped below the horizon.
I have to admit, I was wary of little Ram at first. Despite her young age, and her smelling of nothing malicious beneath the surface-level dirt and Dove bath soap, I did not warm to her easily. She, on the other hand, welcomed me with open arms and beckoned me to explore the world with her. In fact, when she first approached me, I was terrified. My plan at the time was to befriend the mother while the father was off doing whatever it is a father does. I tried to hang around the house, hide under the porch, appear to be a stray but not mangy, hungry but not starved, the perfect balance of interest and disinterest that would make the mother want to come closer, to investigate my presence.
But it was little Ram who finally made the leap. When mother saw me crouched by the curb, pretending to be ready at a moment’s notice to sprint back across the street where I had made my temporary home, she crouched down herself and extended her arm, making silly little chirping noises that I knew were meant to entice me. I continued to pretend to be weary, when really she was playing her part exactly how I pictured. Then, dismantling my pristine facade, Ram came bolting out of the house, straight towards me, fearless as they come. I heard mother raise her voice, something about the street, and I knew this small girl would not hear her, would flounce easily and recklessly into the dangerous road where the metal machines of death don’t think twice about looking more than once. I had had my fair share of close calls with cars before, and despite my fear, I saw the look of one so small and innocent, as I should have been, as I craved to be, and I dove for the bush beside me instead.
Ram did not hesitate. She plunged her small hands into the bush and wrestled me out, though I didn’t put up much of a fight. More than anything, I was afraid of her dropping me, or crushing me, or throwing me into the street. But she didn’t do any of those things. She grabbed me under my arms and held me in the open air, my undercarriage exposed to the wind and the mother. She screeched and shook with joy, holding her trophy (me) up for the world to see.
Mother’s eyes were wide. I didn’t dare move. I tried to communicate with her with my own eyes, to convey my terror and desperation, and I held very still while Ram bounced up and down, shaking my fur from top to bottom. Mother approached, and as she did, I let out a soft meow.
Hello.
“Ram, put him down.”
She huffs and sets me on my paws in the grass. I look up at the both of them looking down at me. Meow.
Please feed me.
I walk between mother’s bare legs and rub my sides against her. It feels divine, the softness of such a gesture, something instinctual and loving that I’d never had the pleasure of giving away so freely, so carelessly.
A hand touches my head. Ram’s palm pat pat pats between my ears. “Mom can we keep him? Pleeeeeeease can we keep him? Mom?”
I look up at mother, heart racing, knowing this is the moment. Meow.
Please, mother. Please.
“Maybe. Let’s feed him and see how he does.”
“Yaaaaaaay!” Ram’s voice gets quieter as she sprints back up the porch steps and into the house. Mother starts walking after Ram and I follow, but as she enters the house, she shuts the door in my face.
Panic streaks through me. Did she change her mind? Is she going to leave me out here? Meow! Meow! Meow!
Let me in! You left me behind!
I shout my grievances at the door, pacing in front of it.
You promised me food! Where is my food? Feed me! Feed me!
The door opens again, shocking me, and I nearly bolt away, when mother and Ram set two small bowls against the panes of the house. One is full of clean, crisp water, the other… something heavenly. Something magical that could not possibly exist in this world at the same time as me. Something I’ve never had the luxury to smell, let alone consume. Something I know, even before I taste it, that I could happily eat every day for the rest of my life.
I dive for the food. It tastes as delectable as it smells, like raw fish straight from the ocean. It is wet and perfectly bite sized, and I have finished the plate in no time and lick up the juice from the plastic bottom until I am certain that every last remnant is safe in my belly.
Licking my lips, I look at mother sitting in the white rocking chair with Ram, observing me.
Meow. What?
“Awwww,” Ram says, clutching her cheeks in her palms. “He’s so cute!”
Mother chuckles. “He is cute. And clearly very hungry.”
Meow. You’re right. I am still hungry.
“It’s a good thing he likes tuna. I’ll ask dad to pick up some actual cat food after work.”
So that’s what that divine food was, the most delicious meal I’d ever eaten. Tuna.
“Can he come inside?”
Mother frowns. “He doesn’t seem afraid.”
Meow. I’ve wanted this for so long.
“Do you want to come inside?” She asks me.
Meow! Yes! Please!
“Alright. But you’re not gonna like what happens next.”
I look at her questioningly. What is she talking about?
“Keep an eye on him,” she says to Ram, standing out of her chair, “while I go run a bath.”
Meow? Bath?
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