I killed a cat. Bluntly ran him over. An icy winter's afternoon with my two boys in the back seat, my dad in the front next to me. I saw the cat starting to cross the road and I thought: I'm going to run you over. There were cars behind me and opposite, no where for the cat to go and no where for me to turn to avoid him. Chabunk! "Mummy, what was that?" "Mummy's just run over a cat darling." "Oh." We stopped and in the rearview mirror I saw in horror how the cat was dragging his massakered body off the road. "He's not dead, dad!" We knocked on the doors to the 5 houses around. It wasn't any of theirs cat. "Right, we just have to call someone out to shoot it. We can't leave him it pain." My father, matter of factly; obviously used to running over both raindeer and elk. I dropped off the boys and my dad. The man with the shotgun stepped in to the car. We found the cat. His loud mewing a call for help. Unprepared for the loud bang and the extreme silence that followed after, I watched. The twitching and jerking in the cats body. The mess. The fine line between life and death. I just can't seem to forget it.
