Pull up a chair. If you sit down he'll jump into your lap. Yes, he is very white, isn't he? Sometimes I'm hesitant to touch him for fear of leaving a smudge. There you go, I told you he'd jump into your lap. Scratch him under the chin. He'll purr loud enough to wake the dead.

It is with death that this story concerns itself.

One night, not too long ago, I found myself driving in a part of town largely given over to industry. You know, over on the east side, where the dirty, brick buildings gaze vacantly at you with windows so cataracted by grime that they might as well not be windows at all. The moon, a great, gravid yellow, had just risen and was sending long, vague shadows across parking lots.

The detritus of our manufacturing processes loomed silently, transformed by the moonlit night and intermittent streetlights into ominous outcrops in what could only be called a wasteland.

I drove past idling big rigs, their drivers no doubt asleep in their tiny bunks, waiting for businesses to open and receive their loads. I was reflecting on what their nomadic lives must be like when I saw an altogether different sort of reflection in my headlights - two pinpoints of light that could only be reflecting off of a pair of cat's eyes. The odd thing was that one was directly above the other. The cat was lying on its side in the gutter.

I usually keep going at night. I'll admit to a certain degree of nervousness about neighborhoods such as the one I was then passing through. This time, however, I found myself pulling over and cutting the engine. Perhaps the cat was hurt, and needed a vet. I remembered another time when I had pulled over in a similar neighborhood to pull a plastic bag from a cat's head. I had probably saved its life. Maybe I could again be of service to the feline community.

The cat was hurt all right. It was lying in a muddy trickle of water with its tongue clenched between broken teeth. I could see by the crisscrossing of old scars that it was feral. I deduced from the evidence of past battles that it was a tomcat. There was no other way of knowing.

As I approached, breathing softly and stepping lightly so as not to scare him, his eyes rolled back in fear, and he made a horrible burbling sound deep in his throat. This is when I saw why he hadn't run. His back end was crushed, and glued to the filthy ground in a drying puddle of blood. Whether he had been thrown there on impact or whether he had managed to drag himself out of the road I'm not sure. It made me think of my first cat, Kitty, who in her old age had taken to sleeping in the street. Her final act, after inevitably being struck by a car, had been to drag herself into my lap. This poor, feral tomcat only had a gutter to drag himself into, where his fluids joined with the muddy runoff from the automatically timed sprinklers up the block.

He was too far gone to attempt mending. I thought about how he must be suffering, and resolved to end his life for him. I had never done anything like what I was about to do, and wasn't sure how to go about it. I searched around for something to use as an instrument of mercy, but could find nothing even remotely suitable.

Finally, I knelt and reached for the poor creature. At this point, he had given up being afraid. His eyes had drooped shut, but I could still hear that awful, bubbly breathing. I gently reached out and rested my hand on his matted cheek, which had probably never before been touched by kindness.

Tears leaked down my face. How could they not? I braced myself, and then, with a shudder that shook my whole body, grabbed his head and snapped his neck.

I stood up on weak legs and got a box from my trunk. It was a gruesome business getting the cat into it. I had to follow through though. I could no more leave him in that gutter than I could sprout wings and fly. I planned to bury him in my backyard.

When I finally made it home, I parked in my driveway and shut the engine off. In the ensuing silence, I heard a soft sound coming from my trunk. My first thought was that I had somehow tragically failed in my attempt at mercy. I leapt out of the car and popped open the trunk.

And there, sitting in the open, bloody box was the cat you now have on your lap.
J5(8)