Swell Zine: The Day Your Cat Died

We woke up around seven o'clock on a Saturday. The dogs were jumping up and down from beside the bed. They were pit-bull mixes, one roan and the other blue-black. In total, one hundred and twenty pounds of dog jumping and barking and scratching the sheets.

I rolled over to you, exhausted, crusts of sleep in the corners of my eyes, "It's your turn," I groaned, a little bitter because I have always been a cat person. Always appreciated quiet and calmness and purring, the occasional rub against my arms while reading a newspaper. In total honesty, my belief that you were a cat person was why I succumbed to loving you. Your cat Cesar was massive, steel gray and had these great, green Halloween eyes. I loved him first.

"Ummm, nooo," was your groggy reply and you rolled against me, naked and warm, your tits burrowing into mine. When you kissed my neck, your lips were dry.

"Hon. Come on. Let 'em out," I continued, only slightly distracted by your peach warmth. And only slightly distracted because by then I had learned that you let yourself fall sweetly against my legs only when there was an agenda. No matter how sugary-sweet it would have been to touch you just then, with the dreaming still wet in our minds, I knew better.

You moaned and rolled away from me and towards the vanilla light of the window. And as that light flooded against your white, naked skin an aching bitterness set in my jaw. I never wanted the dogs. I never wanted happy ever after and a picket fence and certainly not decorative pillows, the kind I wasn't allowed to lay my head against, because, you said, they were DECORATIVE. I just wanted you.

And I thought that "you" meant a cute sushi-eating mouth. You had square black glasses and a choppy haircut, an affinity for songs and knew all the words (although you were flat as a tire). You were good at card games and walked with a bounce, your arms long and fingers dangled well below your waist. You had delicious piano playing fingers. You were liberal, but liked expensive food, lobster bisque and wine from the Côtes Du Rhône region of France. You were clumsy and disheveled and had this amazing cat; big as dog.

And I had no idea, could possibly have had no idea that "you" really meant mortgage and slobbery pit bulls and profoundly bad credit and Amber Romance perfume to cover the smell of dog shit. Was that dog shit?

The odor wafted in over the sheets; the dogs whined as if to defend themselves. I peered over my right shoulder and saw the greenish mush on the cream, Berber carpeting.

"God damn it!" I roared, ripping off the sheets. The dogs flanked me, black and red; they jumped up, leaving welts and I swatted them away like irritating flies. You did not stir. Your eyes were closed like you were having the most perfect dream.

The dogs whined and leapt up at the door like dolphins. I let them into the yard. It was a place meant for them to run free, a green-happy doggie place that had taken me months to cultivate: laying the sod, digging the holes, mounting the pine fence. But the dogs had no appreciation. Absolutely no regard. They ran once around, then started to dig under the house. The soil was sandy and full of dry seashells. By the time I hustled over, they already disappeared down the hole in hot pursuit of the cat.

I huffed inside and slammed the door. You didn't even move when I shook in beside you. I made myself flat and clung to the rail of the bed. I didn't want you to touch me just then. But you did. You always did. And even though I didn't want it to feel at all, your touch had a hot and cold current that stirred.

Then there was a thumping noise under the bedroom, like pipes clinking. Those fucking dogs! A rapid succession of thumps and more clanking, a cat yowl and dogs barking. I sat up and you sat up too, because of the sound: a cat crying, long and elongated before the pitch dove deeper, into the cat's throat, finally yowling from its belly. There was an "umphhh" to the sound, like all the air getting smashed out of a bag.

I went outside and called for the dogs, and this time you rose with me. They bounded in, smiling, tongues and tails wagging obliviously.

Days went by. You kept saying that Cesar never disappears, "He must be roaming."

It was five days before the stench started creeping in the front door. That smell of death: full, moist, stark and rotten.

"I think there's a problem with the plumbing," you said. And I thought about Cesar's death sound and eyed the dogs suspiciously. Chai's purple tongue hung low.

By day six the stench was so bad it barricaded the front door. It grew louder and more profound. It smelled like the worst kind of stinky cheese: stinky cheese gone bad, hanging around the tough crowd, leather jacket wearing stinky cheese, carrying a switchblade stinky cheese.

You just looked inside your cup of peppermint tea and said you didn't know what you would possibly do without that cat. You loved that cat more than anything. Even your grandma, you added.

On day seven I got a spade. I went to the sandy spot that the dogs dug up. When I crawled inside, I shimmied on my belly like a salamander. It was cool and damp under the house. Sure enough, next to the water pipe was Cesar: fat and gray, fur still soft and shaking in the breeze. He was frozen there, face up, mouth open and petrified, eyes open but yellow in the shade.

"Hon, he's dead," I whispered like a coward, then wrapped my arms around your elbows and tucked your head under my chin. But you didn't believe. You pushed past me and burrowed in the dirt. Your feet wriggled out under the house like you were in The Wizard of Oz. Then your feet stopped moving.

I gritted my teeth and climbed back under the house, armed with the shovel. The stench was assaulting, made my eyes water back so hard, I'm sure the tears came out my ears. I tried to scoop Cesar up in shovel, but it only pushed him back over the water pipes. He was stiff but bloated, like the bladder of a waterbed. I needed a better tool. I got a rake.

The smell was brutal, but worse yet was swinging the rake at Cesar's gray body, trying to hook him. I swallowed. I swung again and again. It felt like each time I did it a piece of my stomach fell away into a deep, far away cavern.

Eventually, I dragged the body over the pipes. I tried not to look, but it was so gruesome, I had to. He was bent in half; only the light fur of his belly was visible. He looked tousled, his hair moving like a rabbit's. Behind you made gasping noises. And it didn't help; your chokes and that smell and the feeling of the rake connecting to the body-it made my skin all frostbitten, stomach sour.

Finally, I pulled Cesar out from the crawl space. After one look you started to puke on the hibiscus plants.

"Should we call animal control?" I asked. You didn't say anything, but went inside.

I reached for Cesar's tail. The sensation of his fur made my belly twist and quiver. I couldn't do it fast enough. I submerged him in a garbage bag. It was heavy as I hoisted it to the curb, my elbows bowed out at the sides.

It felt reprehensible to set him out with the trash, but I didn't know what else to do. I tried not to think about the dump, the piles of kitchen garbage, broken doors, dead palm fronds-and now cats. I tried not to think about it, but in my mind there was a mountain of garbage, newspapers swirling in the wind and an army of sea gulls circling the dump trucks.

But worse still was coming inside and seeing your face, cheeks swollen, eyes stained pink and snuggled into the chest of a dog.

April Newman is a MFA Writing candidate at Columbia College and was the 2006-2007 Graduate Opportunity Award recipient. She was a featured reader at Creative Nonfiction Week 2006. Her work has appeared in the Daily Palette and Reservoir online magazines. Currently, she lives Chicago with her puppy, Kona.