Jennifer Venner

Schrödinger's Woman

I love cats. I've had cats most of my life, My first cat arrived for my 5th birthday in a cardboard box with flaps closed. She scratched and wailed as my aunt set the box on the table, plaintive wails, desperate scratches. She scrambled out when I opened the box and bit me when I picked her up. She was black and white and found among other kittens in a barn. She had distemper. Her eyes were rheumy and her motions weak. Within a month she was run over in our driveway by my uncle Doug's garbage truck. He didn't kill her. She wailed and scratched at the gravel, and my mother had to dig a hole, place her on its edge, and decapitate her with a gardening spade. When I came home from school, Mum's hands trembled only slightly when she told me Bubbles was dead but didn't suffer. "No more cats," she said.