Killing things

When she was just a tiny kitten she was locked in a cooler with her five siblings. A wild 2 year old did it. By the time they were found it was too late, they were all dead, suffocated, except for one. The runt of the litter. destined to be ours.

The damage wasn't immediately apparent, she was very sweet, not too timid. She just didn't grow. She looked like a kitten all her life. She was incredibly good natured in my four year old world of endless groping, playing dress up and being lugged here and there. Her name changed as often as my mind did. She was everything from Rainbow to Veronica. We were worried when she became pregnant, being so small, but she didn't seem too troubled by it, leaving us one lone kitten in a sticky bloody mess on a favourite sweater at the bottom of my mother's wardrobe. I watched it through the crack where the doors met.

I remember having the same feeling I did in the bunny dream, when I was around kittens as a small child. I was scared of myself. Holding one, an intense love would grip me, a feeling that I struggled to express. Simply, I just wanted to squeeze them as tightly as possible. No matter how hard I squuezed, I always wanted to do it harder. They were just so cute. This is so hard to explain.

I took that kitten with me everywhere, playing in the garden, building houses out of boxes. My runt, its mother, watching warily, not far away. My little arms and fingers found it hard holding onto that kitten. it wriggled and squirmed, wanting to run in the grass. I heaved up the rabbit cage, no rabbit had lived in it for years, it was a large, heavy rectangular frame covered in wire fencing and cobwebs, with a wooden shelter at one end. No way in or out except via the bottom, which was completely open to the ground. That had been the problem, the rabbits would dig under and out within a day. To put the kitten in the cage I had to try to hold it with one little arm and shoo it in with the other. The funny little ball of fur looked at me with big blue eyes, it didn't want to go in the cage. It must have been so tired of four year old me and all my love, desperate and squeezing. The kitten ran part way out. The weight of the cage on my hands became unbearable, escalating in a flash. I screamed as my arms gave way. That moment of terror seemed to last forever. The solid metal frame was going to land on my kitten's neck. And it did. I remember that run, from the rabbit cage, sobbing across the long dewy grass of our lawn to the back door, as if it were yesterday. The first thing my parents couldn't fix. It was the first time I met that feeling of a final ending. Deep shame. And watching the mother nuzzle at her only baby's lifeless body, life darkened.