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Showing posts from December, 2012
The List The lady next door is moving. She came by one morning, asked me to please look after the local, wandering cat. “It’s just like Tabitha,” she said. Her old cat. Tabitha was not all there, she said. She used to punch and claw at things that weren’t there. “Cats,” I shrugg ed. “That’s what they do.” The lady waved her hand at me and screwed up her lip. She was on the verge. She didn’t want comfort or opinions. She just wanted someone to stand still and be quiet while she talked. Tabitha died of dehydration - just lay out in the sun one stinking summer’s morning and stayed there til late afternoon. Too stupid or lazy to move to the shade. So the lady next door had taken Tabitha to the vet where they’d packed her in ice and injected all kinds of stuff into her poor, fried, motionless body and then she’d died the next morning. And this neighbourhood cat - nobody knew her name - had the exact same markings. The lady next door was moving because she had fal