On my 10th birthday
a rainy sleety weekday morning
I found Dum-Dum the cat dead in my grandmother's
casement window.
There was blood around his tiny black nose...
the only visible evidence of a hit n' run.
I don't know why I was combing through the brush
outside 23 Cole...
Was it a place I had seen Dum-Dum retreat to in the past?
Was there some neighborly eywitness account?
I can't remember.
All I can recall is that the discovery was minutes
before I was due at school
and the rain was picking up.
I do recall a certain pride in telling my teacher &
fellow 4th graders of my birthday misfortunes
rattling them off-- rainy day, dead pet, etc.
I was in a kind of shock, I guess.
Dum-Dum was the 1st real pet I had growing up...
I didn't fathom his feline predecessor, Garbage
(great names, huh? that's my dad)
or really count the anonymous chickens & rabbits
(well, except Henrietta the Hen)
so Dum-Dum's sudden demise was startingly.
And finding the body amid the decomposed leaves,
a foot-and-a-half already below ground level,
was jarring.
A few people at work last week were talking about cats--
how they'll withdraw into the wild when deathly sick.
Private to the end. A kind of grace too.
Who wants to watch kitty in the corner,
vomitting its own guts
or squealing like a child?
Was the casement window as far as Dum-Dum could get?
His insides mashed...ribs puncturing lungs & heart w/
every step.
And the drop into the window space?
He must have died upon shuddering fall.
I've been entertaining fantasies...
a winter field in upstate New York.
Perhaps a far-off window light,
its gleam more pronounced as the early day ends.
I could even have a bonfire!
Burn that behemoth Independence shuttle
just so I'd know it was truly over.
Wine or beer or champagne?
What would I salute to? And a pinned letter?
But these are only fantasies & I hold nothing back in this blog.
Better here, right?
And then Saturday morning...
I had waken again in the wee hours
read a couple Daredevil comic books until I went back to bed.
Re-woke @ 7:30AM
(late for me, even on the weekend)
and this was the 1st thing I saw outside my window--
*OK. Pic attach won't work. It boots it up to top &
double-spaces everything. Dang.
A freakin' deer.
It looked at me through (4) inches of uncurtained window space
& I looked back.
Took its photo.
It hung out another moment,
then bolted around the house.
Just like that it was over.
But its eye
appraising my danger level...
I don't believe in signs
like a certain radio song coming on when you want it
or a phone call from a distant someone someone
exactly at the moment their name pops into your head.
And deja vu is a scientific thing
a chemical misfire in the brain,
that swaps long-term memory w/ short-term.
But I had been feeling lousy all week...
postpartum shooting blues?
Only alive when the camera's rolling?
And that deer...
well, it was exactly what I needed.
Just enough to keep the ball rolling.
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