Notes About a cat escaping. The idea is that this cat would eventually be reconstructed as a cyborg, more or less. But then the circumstances of it’s death, underneath the wheels of a car, are probably important.
The day Damon died was a mostly overcast Tuesday, except for about twenty-six minutes around two-thirty, when the sun found a brief window between the February clouds to shone down on the city of Montreal.
Among the towers of books and papers ascending from the bare wooden floor of the apartment, a shield bug scuttled methodically towards a rectangle of light. It wove through bits of dust like the particles dancing in the sunlight above it. The beetle athletically navigated around hulking shape of a crumpled sticky note. This dark dungeon was dry, devoid of food. It had been a good place to wait out the cold, but the sun signaled a new era.
I must away, the Beetle thought as the embrace of the sunlight illuminated the minute hairs on its body. It is time again to take to the skies, and find my destiny.
The Beetle’s quest was interrupted by a force of godlike magnitude, slamming into its exoskeleton and propelling it out of the light and back into the darkness . Horrified, it scuttled frantically at the air, vaguely aware of two enormous hazel eyes peering out fro the darkness. Their owner’s head rose, into the very light the beetle had been endeavoring towards.
Spare me, O ye great monster, thought the Beetle, although it knew it could not communicate with a god, and it braced itself to die for what may have been the fourth time that day.
The eyes belonged to a tabby cat named Damon who had lived in the apartment his entire life. Damon raised his head, aware of a muted but familiar beep followed aggressively by the slam of a car door, two stories down on the street below.
Leaping up to the bay window, Damon looked down to where the large shapes of trucks plowed audibly through the thick slush on the street.
By the west-facing glass panes, the sun’s warmth was good. Damon was happy for a moment to remember how cold and wet it must be outside, and how warm and dry he was here. But the people outside walked quickly, and didn’t seem to mind in their extra skins of coats, hats and glossy boots splashing in puddles.
People moved clumsily and happily in their long coats down below. A woman twisted backwards as she crossed the crosswalk to say something to a man, smiling, before twirling back to cross to the side of the street the bay window was above. The man was tall, with grew scruff on his face and lock loping strides. The two of them walked towards the apartment. Damon had known the man almost his entire life, and seeing him walk closer, the cat’s whiskers twitched, then relaxed.
Damon’s had swiveled - a noise from the fish market. A man was yelling and holding up a ripped bag, attempting to run after a small shape that was impossibly fast, like the shadow of a bird. A bus obscured the scene and Damon lost sight of the rogue feline. Once it passed, Damon’s eyes searched for the cat. He found it, sitting on the cornice of the library amidst the muted chorus of the wings of scattered pigeons.
Damon’s muscles were tensed and his body frozen. It was unmistakably a cat, the third one that he had seen since memories of the shelter he’d been born in that were as so old as to be dreams. Meows, the smell of feces on certain days, the shiny metal rods of his crate with several others. Just a few days after this apartment had become his home Damon had seen a cat in a crate in a car stopped at the red light. Although he hadn’t been able to hear it, it had it’s mouth open in a meow. Then this summer, he had seen a grey cat moving quickly across the street and out of sight. These were both moments he reflected on frequently, but each was just a few seconds, barely enough time to think. But this cat was just sitting there, eating an entire fish it appeared to have stolen. Damon wondered if he could climb the cornice. As progressively louder footsteps floated up the steps outside, a plan formed quickly in Damon’s mind. He had the faint impression that this moment would change his life forever, but he did not dwell on the gravity of the moment. He simply got into position.