Cat Food (I apologize in advance) - A short Story

"Are you fucking kidding me."  She said.  She moved her hands off the steering wheel to reach over and slug me in the shoulder.  I try to interject to her swinging arms and guide them back to the steering wheel but a nail escapes a fist and I feel it tear at the skin on the back of my hand.   It isn't long after she starts that the car begins to swerve slightly into the center of the lane and the obnxoxious horn of an oncoming frightened car alerts her to the task that she was undertaking.   I try to compose myself and I use my right hand's fingers to massage the bleeding cuts atop the left.

"You don't have to take it so badly."   I try to console.

"Take it badly?"  There's that tone in her voice that I despise.  That annoying tone that says nothing is ever done right.  It's the same kind of questioning, accusatory tone she takes when she repeats what I normally respond, like Why is it bad that you left the toilet seat up? or Why should I care that you didn't clean up your dish?   It's the sort of voice that you don't want to be on the other receiving end of.

"It was just a stupid cat.   You have two others."  I'm trying to be considerate and I figured it was a good thing to remind that although I accidently ran over her eldest cat Kirkpatrick that she still had Tomes and Edith to keep her company.  I know that's stupid of me to think, because Kirkpatrick was the cat she had had the longest.

"I had that cat the longest."  She screams.   "Oh my god."  She puts one of her hands over her mouth and begins her pitiful sobbing into her palm.  Her head jerks and I think it looks like she is about to vomit.   "He was my baby."

To be fair all of our animals were her babies.   It wasn't new that Kirkpatrick was also one of her babies.  If anything he was too old, and he was ready to go.   It was his time, and while I knew it wouldn't be wise to say that, I still figured it was too good a point to not mention.  "He was old anyways, he was going to die soon."

She stares a glare at me that is like brandishing a knife in front of my face.  But the knife is in my face, and I can feel the blood drip over the cut and not only is her eye knife stabbed into my cheek but she is sawing away.  I am probably already dead, but maybe I'm just dying.  Her looks of animosity are like that.

She hits me again.   Clawing at my face and aiming for my eye sockets.   "Watch the road your gonna get us killed."  I tell her, I mean how can one person be so reckless over a goddamned cat.  Its just a cat.  That little son of a bitch used to shit at the foot of my bed, or in my favorite loafers.   And no before you go and think it, I didn't kill little orange Kirkpatrick on purpose.  It just sort of worked out that way.

"Maybe I should kill your fish!"   She says, she sucks up a drop of snot into her nose and I'd almost rather she had used my sleeve or had swallowed it when it reached her lips.  That noise she makes sucking up that yellow thick liquid that crawled down her face made me want to vomit, not to mention it drew attention to itself.  How rude could a person be.

"Why would you kill my fish?"

"So we're even."   She says.

"My fish didn't do anything to anybody."  Which is very true.

"What?!"   She slams on the breaks and I very nearly slam my head on the dashboard except I didn't on account that she lifted her knee up slightly so that I could tell she was about to slam on the brakes and I was able to brace myself with my hands.   We are sitting in the freeway, and the horns are blaring around us and I'm embarassed for her.  Everyone was going to think she was a maniac.

"What, they didn't, they just swim in their tank."

"You had no reason to kill Kirkpatrick either.   He was a sweetheart! You fucking bastard."

"I had my reasons, but that wasn't why I killed him.  I killed him becasue he was laying behind my tire and didn't have the good sense to move."

"So you knew he was there.  And you still kept going?"  She left her mouth agape after that and just stared me down as if hoping I'd find some way to redeem myself, but I really didn't think that was possible.  I mean I killed her childhood pet.   His guts were stuck to the treads of my drivers side tire.  New tires that were now soiled because of Kirkpatrick, just like my loafers.  It seemed even in death that damned cat had found a way to dirty up my stuff.

"I didn't keep going on purpose.  I thought he ran off."

"He has a broken leg."  She informs me, and she was right.  I roll my eyes back in my head to try and recall that place where I had seen him wearing a cast on his left back paw.

"Holy shit.  You're right."  The poor guy couldn't move fast at all.  When the engine turned on he must have felt that rush of panic and he thought I was out for revenge because of my damned loafers.   I wasn't, but it just kind of worked out that way.

"And he's deaf."

"Shit.  He is?"

"He's been deaf since we've been together."   Her mouth still hangs open.  It was as though she were asking me how I could be so ignorant to the medical conditions on little ole Kirkpatrick.   In truth I had no excuses.

"My bad."  I say with a shrug.

She hits me some more and puts the car in drive and we go back home.  I suddenly remember that I forgot to feed my fish today.   Its something I don't forget to do usually, but I was busy hiding the evidence of orange cat off the drive way last week that I forgot to remember to buy the food.   I wasn't going to tell her about Kirkpatrick except she started talking about putting up these posters about him going missing, and offering up money.  Now, I get she loved her cat, but that cat was dead and all those copies would cost money, and a reward on top of that.  I figured she'd thank me in the long run.

"What'd you do with his body parts?"  She asked me.

I wasn't sure if I should tell her that I fed Kirkpatrick to Tumes and Edith, because we had run out of cat food.