Death of a Cat

Yesterday afternoon the car in front of me knocked down a cat. It lay, kicking, on its back while the car drove off. I stopped, remembered my hazards and ran over thinking, please die now, die now.
The cat was bleeding from everywhere. I knew it was hopeless because of a pet first aid course I’d laughed my way through. We’d practised on a dog manikin called Casper – CPR, get it? Made jokes about his lack of gender and other childish stuff.
But I felt for a pulse in the cat’s femoral artery – nothing. Now I knew that the writhing and the kicking were nerves and adrenalin. But my eyes didn’t believe this.
I carried him to the pavement, cradled his warm ginger body and told him that, had he lived, he would have been a king among cats, a mouser like no other, Top Cat.
Running from house to house to find an owner, I wondered if I found one, would they think it was me, the cat killer? I might have to assure them that were it me, I would have been a blithering mess and incapable of coherent speech.
At the fifth house, a man with greying, almost shoulder length hair, answered the door. Yes, he had a ginger cat, a rescue cat about two years old.
Clamped under his arm was The Guardian and in the other hand, a half eaten baguette. A hoop of onion had escaped onto the man’s white t-shirt. I felt relieved. Why? How shallow I am. If a messenger turned up on my tiny doorstep, my husband with his shaved head and hard chin would be liberal and well mannered too.
So I ran with Guardian man and when he cried on the cat’s body, I cradled him too. Then I gave him a towel from my car, a dirty dog towel. We had a short, polite tussle over my giving up a precious towel – the blood might not wash out. I no longer needed the towel, I said. I have a hundred, no, a thousand towels.
I didn’t take the number of the car that killed the cat and I never asked what the cat’s name was. A name would have made a hard thing harder. Perhaps it’s good that I don’t know who hit and then ran. It’s just a cat. No law says you have to stop. Unless you count decency and kindness of course. Maybe the driver was young and frightened. Or old and agitated? I don’t want to believe differently.

First Edition

I’m a big fan of First Edition magazine, although I do wish they’d stop playing around with arty backgrounds so we can actually read all of the poems and short stories.

Last month Spiral Skies - never know if it’s okay to print real names or not – had a wonderful short story in First Edition and this month Lane had a great poem published by them.

Congratulations to both writers.

I’ve submitted my second to last assignment to my tutor on the Open University’s Creative Writing Course. In June I’ve opted to send the first three chapters of a novel rather than poetry or nonfiction. This week I’ll be writing an eighteenth draft of my first chapter.

Or wiping off those felty lines of dust you get between the skirting boards and the carpets.

Shall I go to Cork?

I am still incredulous that I am a runner up in Fish's One Page Story. And honoured too.
Should I go to Cork for the prize giving? It's a long way and the pirate and I are both students - very, very mature ones. But it looks so much fun and to be with other writers would be like coming home.