11/29/2021 Cat and MouseA short story by Darla Poling Ember, my long-haired ashen and snow-white cat, dashed down the hallway--a gray blob in his mouth. I scurried after him, following him into the restroom. He was hunched over that squealing blur of fur, right on top of a starch-white towel, folded on the floor to imitate a bathmat. The screaming was minuscule in the first place, but it soon dissipated entirely. I knelt down, invoking a deep growl from Ember. He looked me straight in the eyes, turning his head to reveal his emerald-green irises nearly concealed by the billowing black of his pupils. No doubt about it: he was in the middle of a kill, and I was interrupting him. I slowly blinked to communicate that I had no ill intentions, but he didn’t stop the low rumble until I backed away, still in a squat position.
This act was quite typical of him, but the choice of victim was not. Being close to summer, Ember would often bring in grasshoppers from outside--some as large as my hand--just to play with it as if it were a toy, letting the grasshopper escape just so he could catch it again. He’d tear limbs off in the process, sometimes even puncture the abdomen. Regardless of how the insect became unable to move, this is when Ember would become uninterested. I guess it was only fun for him when the victim tried to escape. I sprinted to my little sister, Eliza, excitedly reciting to her what was happening. Half asking for help, half inviting her to join in my morbid fascination. Distracted by her friend who was staying over, she blandly replied that she would be there soon, revealing her disinterest. I then swiftly returned to the scene of the crime. Kneeling down, I observed the act, still moving and blinking with laboriously slow speed. I thought of grabbing the mouse from him, but every time I closed the gap between us, Ember let out that rumbling thunder from his throat. As he unclenched and clenched his jaw again and again, there were clicking and crunching noises--I think it was the puncturing of skin and other tissues, perhaps even tiny bones breaking. The delicate whiskers of the poor mouse undulated with the rhythm of Ember repeatedly forcing his teeth into the body. He seemed in another world at that moment, where we had not known each other, where I had not carried him in one hand as a baby, where all he had to focus on was that violent act--savoring every primal second of it. Thinking of that moment, I can’t help but contrast the violence of that act with Ember’s typical demeanor--sweet, needy, almost baby-like. When he kneaded the blankets on my bed to express love, he would also suckle the blanket, gripping it tight. I’ve heard that this is a trait carried on from the kitten kneading their mother’s stomach for milk. Because of this, I’ve always thought of him as adorably infantile, just a poor kitten needing his mother. Furthermore, Ember was certainly not in any genuine need for this mouse. In fact, he was absolutely spoiled with meals. Wet food every evening, with the dry food bowl consistently spilling over with abundance. Still, he’d rip open entire bags of kibble, getting as much as he wanted, whenever he wanted. My mom never stopped him, not once. It was as if she just accepted that this rambunctious child was going to cause trouble anyway, so why even try to stop him? A “Boys will be boys” attitude. Maybe she was right, but she never even tried. Ember gripped the mouse more intensely. The muscles in his face contracted, transforming his appearance into that of a gargoyle. Crimson dripped onto the towel. “Great,” I thought to myself, “Now I have to disinfect the entire restroom.” But in the meantime I did nothing. Well, I did stare, my wide eyes revealing my curiosity. It was like watching a train crash: I couldn’t look away. But to imply that my lack of action was only due to fascination would be a lie; it was incompetence too. I thought of grabbing the mouse, feeling its loose organs squish in my hand as I tried to rip it away from Ember’s determined grip. I couldn’t do it. I don’t entirely know why. Maybe it was because I knew the mouse was already doomed to it’s fate. It’s simple to rationalize it after the fact, but I don’t know why. Even now, I say I couldn’t. But that’s not true: I didn’t. I am intimately familiar with this reaction, it has been passed down through countless generations; it is as associated with my heritage as my steel-gray eyes and circulation issues are. I think of the story of my mother and grandmother, told to me in bits and pieces throughout the years. My mom, seven, having been abused by her father since she was born, having already given her mother a confessional-style letter about his actions years before, and having been ignored, was preparing to kill him. Not in the way that an angsty teenager might exclaim that they wish their parents were dead--no--but as a Hail Mary, as a desperate last option, as a final end to the torture. I can’t help but compare mom to that mouse: the unfortunate underdog thrust into a destitute situation by fate, seemingly unable to beat the odds. David and Goliath; cat and mouse. I think of what grandma must’ve been going through in those two years after the letter, when she knew and still did nothing. She had been sexually abused too, and was ignored to such an extent that she ignored it herself. So was it shock? Malicious disbelief? Denial as a coping mechanism? I ask myself all the time: was she unwilling or unable? I ask myself all the time: is there a meaningful difference? Eliza stomped into the hallway, where I was crouched outside of the restroom. Exasperated and wanting to get back to dancing with her friend, she pushed past me and filled the bathroom with her aura of confidence. Sensing that his fun was over, Ember tried to swallow the mouse without chewing, as a snake would. Bending down, Eliza grabbed the poor thing’s abdomen with both hands and pulled powerfully. She got some of it, but Ember kept the mouse’s bottom half. After swallowing it with great difficulty, he quickly escaped the restroom. “He doesn’t even need it,” I asserted, “He’s just doing this for fun.” For a while after I contemplated why this cat was so needlessly cruel. I thought that maybe it was because I didn’t play with him enough, he was simply looking for stimulation--we raised him wrong. Or maybe he was just a hunter by nature. He was, after all, an animal, controlled by hormones and the cruel chemistry of nature: things outside of anybody's control. It’s natural to look for something to blame, it can be how we learn to fix things--but sometimes it’s a fruitless aim. Sometimes, it becomes a game of asking the universe “Why?” and in response it doesn’t cruelly laugh, it doesn’t stare right back, it doesn’t care at all--it can’t--but if you ask loud enough, your voice will echo back, and you might mistake that for answers: sometimes we will never get a satisfying explanation. Eliza urgently dropped her portion of the mouse on the towel, leaving it with it’s exposed innards facing the sky. It’s fingers were curled, it’s eyes open and vacant, it’s shiny organs on display, like glossy red helium balloons you’d get from Party City. Drops of blood framed the body. There were a myriad of colors inside of it: light brown, some spots of deep purple, but mainly a million shades of red. I thanked Eliza as she closed the door. “I’ll clean it up later.” she remarked, returning to her friend. “Don’t let him back in there.” Even now, I doubt that if that were to happen again that I would do anything different. I wasn’t really thinking, or even feeling: I was reacting. My entire body filled with chemicals and confusion as I stared while Ember crushed a life, perhaps even wasting an opportunity to save it. How can I not feel at least a little guilty for not even trying? I recall my grandmother sobbing while telling me that story of my mother’s youth, maintaining that she did everything she could. I am infinitely conflicted by that assertion. On one hand, after mom admitted her intent to kill her father, grandma swiftly separated the family and brought mom to relative safety--so she obviously could do that before, and chose not to. On the other hand, her perception of how to react to abuse was entirely and demonstrably twisted by her upbringing. It is hard to blame her, but it is even harder to admit that she was never the villain. For that matter, it’s hard to find a villain at all. It is claimed that my mother’s father was also sexually abused, by his own mother. I could trace it back generations, and still come up with nobody to blame, nobody who originally forged the chain. There is always a reason. There is always an excuse. There is always somebody further up who people can point to and say “But look at what they did. Look at how they failed me, look at the scars they gave me--see how deep they really are, how I could touch the bone and flesh if I had the guts to face my wounds, how thoroughly it is rotting, how I have grown around it like a twisted tree trunk trying to survive despite the wind and winter and buzzing chainsaws and biting bugs, how I am just trying to survive--look at how they taught me that love is pain and pain doesn’t matter anyway. Aren’t they the real monsters?” And they are never wrong. But they are never entirely right, either. Comments are closed.
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