The Big Payback*



Yesterday (Christmas), my brother Patrick and I were trying no-complies in the driveway when a cat colored like an alpaca sweater picked its way into our yard from among some pine trees.

"Hey look at the cat."
"Hey yeah. It kind of looks like that sweater I got from Aunt Nancy."

Back in DC, we fed a couple alley cats who would show up in our backyard, climb up on the steel bars that protected our back door, and paw at the glass like a couple of hungry orphans. In DC, I'd yell curses at the cats so they'd leap from the bars and quit smudging the window. But today, hey, we were in Milwaukee, it was Christmas, and this cat literally looked like a gift, so I figured I'd just leave it to the pines and keep trying flatland tricks with my brother.

After a few more laps around the driveway, I rolled up to Pat and told about the buttery no-complies this old-school skater Ray Barbee used to do back in the day, and he was awed. Then, after a few tricks:

"Hey look, is that the cat?"
"Where?"
"By the side of the road."

Over by the cat, there was a small puddle of viscous-looking blood. It lay prone, all four legs stretched out as far as they could go. Its eyes were open, its mouth agape, turned up at the corners in that triangular way that cats open their mouths to hiss.

Pat said, "Oh, God," and we stood there for a minute. A red pickup rolled by slowly, and a woman called out the window:

"Is it dead?"
"Yeah." So she drove away.

Eventually we decided to check its tags. The cat's name was Tess and she had a phone number.

"Should we call them?"
"I don't know. It's Christmas."
"Well maybe we should get it off the side of the road." I grabbed Tess by her tail and dragged her toward the curb. Pat said something about not being able to watch the blood smear on the street.

"I'm going to go get Dad."

Inside, we told Dad. He called the family immediately and left a message. He's good at breaking this kind of news; he's a doctor. He suggested we grab a cardboard box and put Tess inside it so if the family comes back they could pick up its remains in a receptacle. "You know, if they want to bury it," said Dad.

As we hunted in the basement for the box, we wondered where we were going to put Tess.

Pat said, "Whatever you do, just don't put her in a brick wall, like that Poe story about the Masons."

Back outside, three people hovered over the cat. After a second, I recognized one of them. It was Mike, a high-school acquaintance, with his family. Mike had wound up at NYU, studying theater I think.

"Hey Mike. How's it going," Mike asked.
"So-so. How about you."
"Sad," he said, in a sort of theatrical way (convincing, though; not overdone), and he looked at the dead cat, who was still laying stretched out on the grass. "I called the owner." Then he looked back at me. "Well, merry Christmas." And he turned around and walked off with his family.

My dad picked up the cat and put her in the box, taking her around the side of the house.

"You aren't going to put her on top of the recycling, are you?"
"That's what I was thinking, yeah. But maybe I'd better put her in the recycling so the animals can't eat her."
"You're going to recycle the cat?" Patrick was a little freaked out.
"Yeah, they'll just melt her down, re-mold her, and sell her: 'This cat 90 percent post-consumer waste.' She'll be a little browner and granier than the new kind, but it's good for the environment."
"Gross. I'm going inside."

Dad took some time to peel the postage label off of Tess's coffin. Then he opened the lid and set her inside the recycle bin.

I went inside and talked with Mom for a little bit, then checked my bloglines and read the news. A little later I was playing pool with Pat listening on the new Ghostface joint, when Ghost of Christmas Present dropped this down my chimney:

"Like James Brown / It's the big payback."

RIP to all, and to all a good night.

*see also http://riffmarket.blogspot.com/2006/11/hypnotize.html