Main blog is Deathsmallcaps

One: you were a little kitten, playing on someone’s front lawn. A friend once stole a kitten like you off the street, fed him up, and gave him to a shelter once he looked healthy enough. I helped. Because we both knew that kittens like you have a terrible time in my college town once it’s winter. A town tiny enough to have really only one street with sidewalks, a town with the only stoplight in the county, and yet full of animal misery.

But I had to get to class, and you were playing with your sisters and brothers, so I kept walking. It was still summer, after all.

Two: My brother’s dog saw you across the parking lot. I thought my brother saw you too, and would leash his dog before letting her out of the car.

He did not, and she went flying across the lot. You got away, thank God, but I was pissed. I prided myself on never letting my dog bug you guys. Of course it is one of her desires - she is a genuine bully and likes to pick on and eat smaller animals (I am very proud of her ability to catch rabbits) but cats? No. I felt righteously angry for you, and helped catch the dog. You were gone.

The third time I saw you, you were dead. I knew it was you, because you were one of the few homeless cats that wasn’t so inbred you looked like everyone else. You were white, with large black patches. In all actuality, you were probably what I call a teenage kitten. Most of the size of an adult cat, but leggy and not very solid. In any case, one October Saturday I had been walking my, my brother’s and my brother’s girlfriend’s dogs around 10 at night, chatting away on the phone, when they started pulling. This was not very unusual; I just slowed down my pace and made my steps steadier because I did not feel like getting pulled off my feet. And then I saw you, in the middle of the street, centered beneath a yellowed and slanting streetlight, at that intersection behind the post office and the bank. A dark puddling stain (forever) surrounded your body with a slight dragging spray to the east, and two round things, grape-like but slightly too flesh-colored to be truly purple, lay nearby, at the curb. I knew them to be your eyes.

I gave your body a wide berth, going quiet on the phone, tearing up, the dogs fighting me every damn step of the way. I did not want to let them eat you. It felt sacrilegious; and besides, it would be better for the buzzards to get you.

The eyes disappeared, but you laid in the middle of that back street for days, the moon waxing and waning. Every time I walked within sight, I wondered with irritation why you had not been eaten yet. I was glad that no further mutilation had befallen you - that would have sent me right over the edge. That autumn was hard, and you added a terrible, unforgettable emphasis to how incredibly agitating and unfair life could be.

Even from a distance, I could still see the darkness of the stain (forever forever) under your body.

Eventually, one day I dared to walk around the block, and I thought you were gone. “Thank God,” I said to my mom on the phone. “Someone finally did something.” The stain was there (forever forever forever) but you were gone. Maybe someone had buried you.

Then I and my dog rounded the corner further.

Someone had pushed you aside, to the curb, where your eyes had rolled after you died.

My own started prickling again. “I wish I could bury him,” I said to my mom. “But I don’t have a shovel.” I was sad because you continued to be dead in such an awful way. I was angry because once again, you were treated with half-measure and convenience. Perhaps someone had braved tainting an old boot, and had pushed you to the side of the road, so that they would not have to see you as they drove by. Your body, coincidentally, followed the dragging spray east.

You were right next to a dumpster. Why couldn’t they have put you all the way inside?

“This is the last straw. If I had a shovel, I would put him in the dumpster.” I told my mom. I had long ago decided you were a tom. “I don’t know what to do.”

Her voice was an audible wince as it came through the phone. “What if you took a garbage bag and scooped him up, like poop.”

The idea horrified me. But I knew it would work. And it was something I could do.

I pulled my dog away from your scene. Her dramatic scrabbling and whining almost felt as if it were for show; she knew I wouldn’t let her have you, but there’s a reason why Hope was in the box of sins. I took her home and grabbed a bag out of my roll of trash bags.

How ignoble. How demeaning. How necessary.

It was white, so I knew I would see your body in the bag.

So I grabbed two. I knew I would still see you. But it would not do, for you or some poor garbageman, for your shroud to rip on some debris and for you to fall out.

Then I put on gloves. Just in case.

You took two hands. You smelled stale, as if the chill had not truly let rot set in, though the sweetness of decay was definitely in your bouquet. I did not cuddle you close, though some part of me felt it would have been right. Still, I knotted the top of your bag to keep you inside. Then I put you in the other bag and knotted it too.

The dumpster that you died next to was open, thankfully. I would have carried you to the dumpster next to the prison guards’ motel - it’s always open - or the one near my apartment - it’s mine - but I was glad it was not something I had to do.

I opened the lid, and looked inside, and gently laid you away from anything sharp. It was the best I could do.

I’m not really a Christian. But for dead animals, I always pray, at the very least looking to the bare sky and sending a kiss in request and company. I took a minute more to ask God to keep you safe and warm. And then I walked away, and took a shower.

I’m sorry you were born. I’m sorry you were inconvenient. I’m sorry some shithead leaving the bar nearby ran you over one night and you died alone, under a streetlight, on top of a puddling stain of your own blood (forever forever forever forever). I’m sorry I had to dispose of you. I’m sorry that before I held you, I wondered if animals that were run over were sacrifices to human success by local spirits desperately investing in the most powerful species on the planet.

You’re not the first dead cat I have seen. You’re just the first that I had to see more than once. Dead domesticated animals (if you were to be alive at all, you should have been in someone’s home), either I only have to pass them once, or by the time I go by the spot again, someone has already taken them away. The dogs, of which I have only ever seen three, are taken away quickly; I imagine that an owner recognizes them and takes them home for a proper send off. For you cats, I don’t hold my breath.

I’m sorry it took me so long to write to you, about you. Yesterday, I saw a cat that looked enough like you, lying dead in the snowy road, as I drove to my internship. I made sure to drive over it, wheels to either side. Seven hours later, that cat was gone. I looked for it, though I will admit I did not look to the sides of the road to check if it, too, had been pushed to the side.

Your stain (forever forever forever forever forever) took all winter to wash away. The darkness, the slight red, lingered for longer than I thought it would.

But I know it’s there. Even if the cold asphalt sapped away at your warmth and never let your blood reach the earth below. The stain will forever forever forever forever forever forever mark that spot as yours to me. As it should.

I hope you’re in heaven. Or if you’re trying this whole living thing out again, you’re safe and warm. Someone should hold you to their chest, in both arms, so you can feel their big heart beat against yours as you both look outside to the cold. Someone should say to you, “Good thing you don’t have to go out there, huh?” and get you a treat just so they can hear you purr.

Someone should truly love you. In your next life, you’re going to have a better time. You deserve it.

Sincerely,

A man who prays for your brethren on the road

Events happened Autumn 2024

Written Spring 2025

I usually forget but thanks to @whitefangthefightingwolf ‘s post I remembered to finish this really quick! Bit of an artistic rut but I always want to post on The Glorious 25th of May and rarely remember. Second year!

Truth, Justice, Freedom, Reasonably Priced Love, and a Hard-Boiled Egg! Truth and Justice are kind of combined in the scales, freedom is the fist, love is the heart (yes I know it’s not that kind of love) and then I drew a bunch of eggs. The piece was originally done in blue and a little black, with only the lilac and it’s stem in other colors. But I wanted them in thematic line with each other and purple seemed the more appropriate considering the flower.