"See you later, Scrag. Have fun!" I said to her that Monday morning on my way out to work. She was outside my window taking a morning nap. I lightly scratched behind her ear as she turned her head up towards me.I knew what her day was going to be like. Frolicking in the grass, sleeping on the terrace, playing with her Mommy and Poppy, patrolling around the fence, and maybe even catching an insect or two (hopefully not a lizard). I took to work with me the image of her sleeping under my window in the soft morning sun.
I got home from work late that afternoon. Usually, Scraggy runs up to meet me as I enter the gate. That day, she did not. It was already time for her dinner and I knew she'd be hungry, so I called out her name. She didn't come. I walked to the backyard thinking, "She's probably stalking some poor lizard again." But she wasn't there.
From the far end of the backyard, one of Lola's helpers looked at me strangely and started walking towards me. I thought, "That's odd, why is she acting so weird?" I turned to look under the atis trees. The helper was still coming towards me. I asked Mommy, who was rubbing against my leg leaving cat hair all over my jeans, if she had seen Scraggy. The helper was right beside me.
"Are you looking for your cat?" she asked in our dialect. I silently nodded. I couldn't seem to open my mouth.
She started talking about a cat and running and a white car and waiting for me and ants. It was all a hodgepodge of words that I couldn't - or didn't want to - fully comprehend. Then she led me to a mound behind a banana tree in the backyard where the soil looked freshly unearthed.
My mind went blank. And numb.
The helper started digging. She pulled up from the ground my beautiful Scraggy. Her fur was still so shiny. They had waited for me, she said. Lola wanted to wait for me before they buried her. But the ants had started swarming over her and there were the dogs.
Lola came out to join us under the banana tree with another one of her helpers. The cat had gone outside the gate, she said. Scraggy had been on the other side of the street, playing in the weeds. A speeding white car had swept up the road just as she was running down.
They all ran outside to get her, the helpers said. Lola told them to. I didn't hear the rest of what they were saying.
I nodded one more time and motioned for them to put Scraggy back into the ground. She looked like she was sleeping. I watched as they covered her with soil, until all I could see was the mound again. I wished that she would break out of the ground and race me to my room. I wanted to call out her name and wake her up. I walked away and let the tears come instead.
