pad-pad-pad susurrus, of something hard and small hitting slightly yielding ground, and even though I didn’t want to, I found myself turning around to take a look.
First, all I could see were the luminous backs of the cats’ eyes, wavering yellow-green dots, small-veined and oddly high above the ground. Then, as they came closer, I realized why their street-lamp-reflected eyes were so oddly positioned.
They were walking. On their hind paws, front feet held up in the begging position in front of them, and slowly, quietly, they settled in groups before the pans of food I’d left, and before they hunkered down to eat, they danced around the tins, heads held up high, chins skyward. As if Areille was holding their paws in turn.…
Wishing I hadn’t left my cell phone at home (one look at the voice mail list of reporters who wanted quotes from me made me shut it off the night before), I could only watch, camera-less, as the cats did their dinner dance, backs arched proudly in the dim light, until the smell of the cat food came wafting down the alley, and I hurried away from there.…
Once I’d spoken to all the reporters who’d left messages, I felt as if I’d absorbed a part of Areille Quies as surely as if I’d been a cat partaking of that final meal with her. Eventually, interest in the murder (which was eventually solved; the cop at the hospital was right, it was a group of cat-haters who ironically also belonged to a local bird-watchers organization) died down, the Muslim business owners got together and fed the cats on their own, and gradually, the everyday business of getting back to my life as a Friends of Feral Cats worker took over my thoughts. I’d made Ursula What’s-Her-Face go through Areille’s apartment and photograph all her stuff for eBay, per Areille’s request (amazingly, everything, even her high school and college diplomas, sold, with the proceeds going to FoFC), and soon it was spring, then summer, and I was certain that the whole Areille-in-the-Alley part of my life was over, done with, a sad/funny/surreal interlude…until the day when Ursula came into the office and demanded that we all log onto YouTube, to see a specific video—
Déjà vu washed over all of us as we watched the action which took place in the alley behind Asad Avenue, obviously filmed with a cell phone camera, but this time, the only thing missing was Areille herself, as the cats danced and walked and stayed upright in that alley and gradually other people, the Muslim shop owners and their customers, entered the alley, too, but the cats kept on their feet, and danced willingly with whomever was brave enough to extend their hands…and while I recognized some of the cats from the time when their original partner was alive, many of the other cats were young, little more than kittens, and the people in the alley had to bend down quite low to dance with them, but all of them were smiling, and silently laughing and clapping their hands to some unheard song, as the cats kept on dancing, and I kept doing the feline math in my head, Nine weeks gestation, plus five months, maybe six equals whatever was in her blood that morning did get into the cats after all…but I don’t think it was just Toxo they ingested.
And when I saw one of the children pick up a kitten, and carry it away, I remembered what she had said, about the bald cat in that barn, and those mutant cats with the tiny legs, and for the first time since the cat tracker lady of Asad Alley died, I found myself wanting to get myself to that alley, and dance with the first cat who would walk up to me, and allow me to take his or her paw in mine.…
Inspired by the life of Joseph Zeman, “the pigeon man of Lincoln Square” (1931-2008), and the articles of Barbara Mahany.
With thanks to James B. Johnson, who suggested this story to me.
Dedicated to the memory of Grady, Quinn, Sheba, Trudy, Baby Biscuit, Max, Mongo, Ebony, Graykins, and Fluffer-Nutter.
And also The Dude, Harley, Inky, Bogie, and Chickpea.
—A. R. Morlan (and cats) 2013
A LIMP DEAD CAT IN MY ARMS, by Michael Hemmingson [Poem]
Worf died in my arms.
That’s the name of my cat. Worf.
Yes, Star Trek: Next Generation.
Whenever the TV was on and someone
yelled, “Mr. Worf!” my cat, Worf,
would jump up, wondering who was calling him.
The problem was renal failure—drinking a lot of water
and peeing up a storm like a drunk on
a Friday night with too much extra
money for too much beer.
Then: he couldn’t stand, walk, or eat,
his legs and lower body shaking
as if he had Lou Gehrig’s Disease,
as he tried to move from the floor
to the litter box, giving up
and taking a painful shit
as he lay crying, cursing the fate of old age.
I thought about taking one of
my two-year-old daughter’s diapers
and putting it on him, reminding
me how my father had to wear adult
diapers in his last hours
in late Spring, 2011, finding out
the truth when I returned from
Mexico to see my child.
It happened again, Mexico and death.
I came home from a trip to Tijuana
and he was half dead, my cat,
like my father was two years prior;
my other cat, Poe,
did not understand
what was happening to her brother.
I didn’t think Worf would make it
through the night, in bed with me.
Death slept between us.
Twelve years ago, when he was eight weeks,
he was rambunctious and liked to bite
everyone, everything,
bouncing and leaping from
one end of a room to another.
In the morning I got him ready for
the Humane Society, a quick and peaceful end
of a good twelve-year run. I wrapped him in
a blanket and he was excited about
going outside; he went limp in my arms,
mouth open and eyes staring glassy at nothing,
the way my father looked when he killed himself
