Living at large

I’m guessing every summer in the city is sweltering hot, but after we ate all the rats, this one was officially miserable.

I was a good tracker, better than some, and tracking is a skill our kind is particularly gifted in. Nonetheless, I had gone without food for numerous nights now and felt powerless and drowsy. I lived on the North end of Van Siclen Avenue then. The area was famous for its old brick row houses that are protected and historically preserved in their original architecture. We pretend we know nothing of these human affairs. What with everything else we know, why would we care about something like that.

I squatted under the porch of an empty house, those being common in the changing neighborhood. Lots of houses were for sale or just sold, and stood waiting for their new families. Many people fed stray cats, but I had lost too many friends to rat poison, equally meant for us, as it was for our meals. As the neighborhood changed, the feeding hands disappeared one after the other, and the deceitful treats increased.

I would walk the streets right after sunset, through the night, and before sunrise, looking for traces of prey. All I encountered was the warm smell of kindred fur, left behind by those who had spent the hottest hours of the day lying in the shadows under the bushes, exhausted and thirsty. By night time everybody was on the move, trying to find anything; old sandwiches, other spoilage, dead mice, baby mice - Hell, why not some cat runt that nobody would miss...

We were all cross bred and most of us had lived on the streets for generations. I had friends and family on every street. Life of a stray cat was usually good, even wonderful, in that part of Brooklyn. With the Ridgewood Reservoir and Highland Park offering a home for numerous rodents, birds and insects, there was always plenty to eat around the neighborhood. Humans did their part too. All the way from Sunnyside to Fulton, the land I knew, the trash days were every Sunday and Wednesday and it was impossible not to run into a parade of rats on every corner those night. They were so greedy and fat it was almost boring to catch them.

Some cats ate from the trash cans themselves, which I never did myself, nor condoned. I couldn’t degrade myself that way. I felt those kinds of cats - the roach-munchers, the lickers-of-empty-PB-jars - had given up, convinced that they were not meant to live the good life. I loved the taste of warm blood and I even occasionally provided for some kittens in the neighborhood, just to teach them to love it too. I not only pitied, but was disgusted by house cats. No wonder they slept so much, so would I if I had that little to do.

I kept mostly to myself, making sure not to end up alone with any tomcats. I had no time for gestation, it makes one soft and lazy. I didn’t mind what the rest of the neighborhood queens did, but I would never trust my livelihood, not to mention the livelihood of possible kittens of mine, in the paws of a street corner gigolo.

This summer the scorching hot sun had dried lawns brown, made the trees lose their leaves early, and shrunk the Reservoir to half of what it usually was. And then, the plague came. Suddenly there were no rats, just dead rats. Everywhere. Some ate the dead rats, got sick and died. The corpses that nobody ate scared away other rats, promising terrifying and painful death for anybody who came close. By the end of July all rats and mice were eaten or rotten. The scarce Autumn would turn into a merciless Winter, ready to finish our hunger weakened spirits and bodies.

Looking for food, I eventually reached Arlington. The sun had just set, the streets were quiet and empty, with no human establishments close by. I was in a fine mood, no matter what. I smelled everything with such overpowering clarity, the dry dirt, the crispy leaves crumbling to dust, the plague. And then, I smelled Rufus.

I followed my nose, slipped between the bars of a white gate and circled around a house at the end of the street. Rufus was an age old, white and taffy colored cat with a pink nose and constantly tired, squinted eyes. You couldn’t tell looking at him but Rufus was fat for always finding prey, which meant he was actually quite the athlete. I bet Rufus could kill a hare.

I followed his scent to the bottom of a tree, climbed on a branch and jumped on the roof. Landing on red tiles, still warm from the day, I froze on my paws, my nostrils immediately flared, my tail nervously flapping in the air, my ears shot on my sides, all of me learning if I was safe.

Rufus was laying in the shadow of the chimney in all of his twenty pound glory, and I saw straight away that something was wrong with him. He did not as much as flinch when I clumsily stumbled on the rooftop. My nervous tail set at the realization my closest possible opponent was clearly too sick to stand, let alone do anything else.

“Meow, Rufus.”

No response. I dawdled over to the chimney, acting casual in an attempt to be considerate. It’s a very catlike courtesy, ignoring one's troubled state. It’s what I would’ve appreciated if caught in an embarrassing condition like that.

“Any luck tonight?”

“What do you want?” Rufus barked.

“I’m ready to climb to Highland. Streets are tapped out.”

“There is always something to catch,” Rufus said slowly, his voice low and hoarse. I saw he tried to turn over, but managed only to tremble of exhaustion, sigh, and lay back down. I stepped back on my paws and leaned to his direction, sniffing him eagerly, trying to detect his condition. That’s it? Did he drop just like that, like an acorn in the grass?

“He’s not dying”, a voice blurted out next to my tail.

Fast as a lightning, I jumped 360 ͒ with all my hair sticking up, claws popping out, involuntarily hissing. Instinctively I tried to flick the intruder’s nose - and then I got her scent into mine. Giovanna.

Giovanna, I believed, was the single reason why black cats had such a bad reputation. When she walked the streets after dusk, her body was like a shadow in the dark and all that was visible were her green eyes, like lights waylaying in the dark. Giovanna could have been a film star in another life - but she was a stray cat in New York City.

“Damn it, Gia...” I gasped, still flushed.

“It’s not the plague”, Giovanna whispered. “He’s just digesting rat bones.”

“Oh, so he ate the one rat in the state that didn’t have it?”

“I’m sure he’ll get them done. He’s a Moloch.”

“I hope you’re right. I like him.”

“Me too. He’s got the whiskers game strong as hell.”

We left Rufus digesting his meal gone bad, and went our separate ways.

A cat goes where her nose points, but what points her nose? Cemeteries were not typically good hunting grounds, but no corner of the city seemed to be for now. And who knew? Maybe there would be scavenger birds to catch. Maybe there was a body waiting to be buried that I could eat the face off. Maybe the moon would pour cream on me if I danced around the cemetery three times. I just had no other place to go.

An old beau, Vincent, lived on Cypress Hill. It wasn’t typical for cats to do so, so for a cat like Vincent, it was most fitting. He hadn’t been the same after he got hit by a car. Vincent actually died then. The driver, who even tried to dodge him, got out of his car and rubbed his chest until his heart started beating again. He took Vincent to the vet and took care of him until he was mended. Vincent repaid this service by taking off at the first convenient moment, and he returned as a changed cat. A part of him never came back. He was timid, stiff, convalescing.

Vincent inhabited a small area, rarely moved around, hunting just enough to stay alive. He had a dark fur, so dark it was almost black, with streaks of honey in it - and streaks of scabies, last time I saw him. Whenever people buried somebody - and with the cemetery crammed with graves already, that didn’t happen as often as you’d like - Vincent would be sure to make an appearance and stare at the open grave, as if wishing to be joined there with the deceased.

I climbed up Warwick, passed the Lower Highlands, crossed the Vermont Place to Queens and slipped to the cemetery under a fence. There was a steady hum filling the air - planes from JFK were always crossing the sky - and the crickets played a symphony. Bristle of trembling aspens came and went with a whiff of the wind.

I caught Vincent’s scent and felt as though I was dropping an anchor out of my chest. For a moment my hunger was replaced with something far more painful. I rubbed my side a gravestone, staining it with my scent.

I padded on the mowed grass, deep in thought, when I literally pumped into a praying mantis, sitting on top of a gravestone. I marveled at this sight for a second. Offered to me like a danish with a fork, the mantis was busy chewing off the head of what I assumed to be her former lover. I purred. The mantis then turned toward me, her razor sharp arms poised, head slightly tilted and her hypnotizing yellow seeing nothing. I knew that look. She definitely saw me, but she was so fumed from the killing she couldn’t find it in her to jump for safety. As my needle sharp fangs pierced her crunchy armor, I silently sang praise for the hunter's instinct that grew from inside me naturally like winter fur when I needed it.

I bounced back where I came from, crossed the tennis fields and walked under a car at the end of Sunnyside Avenue, crouched down and went still. Being under a car always made me feel both safe and vulnerable. Not many things could reach me under a car, not people or dogs, and I could feel the vibrations, steps and sounds from all sides. At the same time the scent of motor oil and gasoline basically made me blind to all other smells. My eyelids grew heavy and I slipped into sleep...

In my dream, I galloped over the C train station and dived into the stairwell. The underground was even hotter than outdoors, the stagnant air hitting me in the whiskers dense as a wall. I could smell everything and everybody: the burning, revolting sting of human piss; the range of perspiration aromas carrying from rose hip to rotten fish; the dirt and dust carried in from thousands of streets in the shoes of trespassers; the stench of artificial perfume oils, and of course the overwhelming, sweet, soft scent of aging wood and rusting metal. The station was empty and dark, only lit by the MTA ticket counter sign. I passed in between the bars to the Manhattan bound rails.

The tunnel was dark and getting darker, and I saw better and better. The smell of the air was getting better too. There was first less and less, and then practically no traces of human smell. I felt hopeful, cheerful and willing to go on a journey...

I felt a rumble. Not long after I heard the train car shrieking - it got louder and closer, until it was unbearable. I froze, and turned to look back where I came from, towards the station - and just then, the train reached my stretch and the lights lit the tunnel behind me - I didn’t see where I was going anymore, my eyesight rendered useless in sudden brightness. The train was getting closer and closer, and fast, but I was petrified, paralyzed. The hot air was blowing my whiskers, I pressed my eyes shut. Just then, at my most helpless moment, I smelled it - I smelled the plague. The train blew it in my face in an undeniable surge. There was no way to go, there would always be another train. And then another, and then another. It would take me forever to even reach the next station. And what if I did reach it? There would always be more Brooklyn, and then more, and more.

A roar shook the Earth; the car I was sleeping under, started up. I was whipped awake and running before I realized it. I screamed - MEOWWW - as I ran, and hit a trash can - it fell down with a terrible noise - but before I really felt the pain, I was already well on my way down Hendrix, and didn’t stop until I came to Fulton. I crashed down in the shade between two buildings, panting, shaken by the dream I was awakened from, as well as the reality I woke up to.

It was hardly noon, but the air was smothering hot - and something else was wrong. The air was filled with cries, and not just of one cat, but many. It sounded a lot like a child crying, but there was an undeniable hint of eternal boredom mixed with acute emergency. Cats were starving. This would be more expected in the dead of winter. Those few days just before Christmas, when frost was biting through the fur, and the humans were so focused on their own feasts they forgot their occasional whim to feed a stray cat. The piercing cold would get unbearable, paws and tail ends would start to freeze and die. Dying in the summer was different, an exhausting and usually quiet affair. Just as I got up to escape this misery serenade, I saw my father.

I would very often run into Freddy on Fulton. He was born a stray, but had many admirers and almost lived in a house. Freddy wasn’t allowed indoors of that house, and only got a served meal if Marie-Claire left him any of hers. As much as I generally detested a thing like that, Freddy was getting old. Let him have it, I thought.

I was one of the thirty-one kittens he had had with five different queens. Freddy was originally from Queens, but had to leave the neighborhood after getting a bred cat pregnant. Apparently, she was destined for some kind of trophy pet life and when she got disgraced like that, the people of the neighborhood started a full war on stray cats. This was around Midland Parkway, further East. It is hard to imagine a suburb in this city where people were like this. Us cats are usually considered to be citizens of N.Y.C. due to the enormous benefit we bring by controlling the pestilence of the boroughs. There was a beautiful balance, usually, but one Freddy at the other end of the scale was enough to bring it down. Freddy had galloped down until he reached Brooklyn and never returned.

Marie-Claire, his latest wife, was the house cat. She was all white, soft as cotton - and deaf, which was fairly common for white cats. Freddy and Marie-Claire had been married early in the Spring and soon after they had four kittens; deux blancs comme Marie-Claire, and two mixed with black and amber, like Freddy. Marie-Claire’s deafness did make me wonder, how the hell Freddy ever got her mounted when there was no possibility for verbal persuasion - and then it occurred to me that was just it. A deaf cat hears plenty; she senses the vibrations of the ground, she still has her nose, her whiskers - but she doesn’t have to listen to all the bullshit that leads to mating.

Freddy was lounging by the Almontaser Deli, sitting at the corner like a misplaced gargoyle. The people tolerated Freddy well. Becoming a bodega cat was a good gig, kind of like having a job. You help the people by eating the mice ransacking the produce, you get cozy and warm in the winter, but still kind of get to hunt.

“What do you want?” Freddy moaned.

“Hello to you too.”

“Are you here to see me?”

“No. But it is nice to see you.”

“I don’t have any food for you.”

“That’s fine.”

“I mean it. Not even left overs.”

“That’s not why I’m here…”

“I just told Naomi. Did you see Naomi?”

“No. Who is Naomi?”

“She’s your little sister. I just told her to take a hike. She was asking for food.”

“She was? How old is she?”

“She is one of the new batch.”

“She can’t hunt?”

“C’mon, Carrie, who the hell would have learned how to hunt if they were born this summer? There is absolutely nothing to catch.”

“I get by.”

Freddy paused before he answered. He looked smug, amused, even gentle.

“I know you do, kid. What’d you catch?”

“I caught a praying mantis, but that’s it.”

“A praying mantis? That’s exotic,” Freddy whispered, dropping his weight on his other hip, sprawling on the pavement like the leisured Greek he appeared to be.

“I bet I would not have been able to catch it if it wasn’t mating. Sex, it makes a lot of things drool on themselves.”

“Spoken like a true expert.”

“Pardon for not being a whore.”

For some reason, the word 'whore' made Freddy startle.

“I’m starting to think your mother was. It’s hard to believe you’re my kid, sometimes.”

“You mean, it’s hard to believe I’m the daughter of a gigolo because I don’t screw around like he does?”

Freddy licked his paw and rubbed the corner of his eye, as if trying to relieve a pinprick.

“I know this might be impossible to hear on that high horse of yours”, he murmured, “but I advise you to not call your fellows whores like that. They’re animals, just like you are. You love to hunt, right, you love to kill? You think that’s more noble urge than mating?”

“I do, actually. I kill to eat, to survive, to sustain. You’re talking about killing as if there was something morally wrong with it --”

“Well, you talk about screwing as if there was something morally wrong with it.”

“It’s different for me, dad.”

“Well, I guess, I hear you. You call us misters whatever you want to. But don’t call your sisters whores --”

“I will if they are whores.”

“Some queens love kids. They love life. And they don’t need your judgement.”

“I do love life.”

“Do you? Why do you then want to put other cats down? For not being like you?”

“That’s not what I am doing.”

“Look. You’re not a kid anymore. There’s only so much I can do for you. But when you name things, you define things. And no one is ever just one thing.”

“It’s not about screwing. I need to decide for myself, I need to be free. Why would you worry about it like I do? You can do your thing and go free. And I can’t, not if there’s a litter to look out for.”

Freddy shook his head slightly. I saw he was ready to change the subject.

“If you can’t find anything else, there is a dog at the end of Van Siclen. A Doberman Pinscher. It’s called Capone. They keep him outside most of the time, his water dish too. And his food dish… If you’re interested.”

From what I had gathered, people sometimes purchased dogs and cats as pets. The custom is not a familiar trade in the animal world. After purchasing somebody, the creature would live with the people and was treated in many ways as a member of the human family, with gross exceptions concerning their animal rights and natural way of life. They didn’t work for their own menu, but ate whatever was offered. They had to wear things other than their fur, like collars, sometimes even clothes. Their outdoor hours were restricted or just completely prohibited. They would defecate in boxes. Sometimes they were stuffed in little coffins and taken to fairs and parades, where they were forcefully dragged at the end of a leash. Sometimes they were taken into sterile white rooms that reeked of rubbing alcohol, they were shaven, stung with needles, cut with knives and sewed up again - and sometimes they didn’t wake up from the anesthetic.

“I’d rather die”, I winked at Freddy and took off, his soft laughter greeting me goodbye. No, I would not depend on people, not ever. People were killers, people were jailers, and I would rather be the master of my own starvation.

My faith bound me to Naomi later. I saw a tiny, young, white cat on the street corner, her end half up in the air, screaming. Some runt from last summer was scrubbing her like a plate of cream. Naomi, as she later turned out to be, was moaning, her claws sticking out, as she scratched the pavement with her fore paws. Something about being exposed like that, in a way that makes you cry out, just wouldn’t suit me, personally. Some might say I was old fashioned for being like that. I imagine there is not one thing a tomcat would not say when trying to make a queen cry. The exchange with Freddy was still fresh in my mind. Was he right about me? That I just detested something because I couldn’t have it myself?

When I looked again, there was already another hustler at the base of that tail. In fact, now that I cared to take note, there were altogether three toms around her, the other two waltzing on the curb in anticipation of their cut. It was actually rather unheard of that there wasn’t a fight between the toms, that they would just wait their turn, like getting a taco from a deli. There was an agreement behind whatever I was looking at. Was she bravely careless, taking in all the pleasures life could offer her? Did she feel a deep rooted, amused, arrogant certainty, that whatever was to come from that moment of loving, she would be able to handle it? Or was she just a brat?

What happened next was sudden, as unexpected things often are. Seemingly out of nowhere, Rufus jumped on the street, like an orange burst of fire. He was back to his former glory, bad bones digested and all. He looked like a cougar, smooth and muscular, landing his paws perfectly between the shoulders of Naomi’s current lover. The other two toms charged for safety.

At first, there was nothing irregular about it, as violent as it was. Then Rufus sunk his teeth at the back of his opponent’s neck and tore an ear off him. Naomi was frantic. She was crying and prancing, trying to slap Rufus. This was my cue. I didn’t want to see Naomi ripped to shreds. I called out for her and she came running.

This is where cats are different from people, I bet. When push comes to shove we had no trouble thinking quickly on our feet. A cat’s life is too short to be complicated with having a stand, even if that means watching your friends die. And that was exactly what we were watching. Rufus was eating the face off Naomi’s fellow. He had ripped a hole in his throat, disabling him from screaming, his blood flowing to the pavement.

“We should go.”

“Why did he do that?” Naomi wept.

“He got his pound of flesh...”

“But he did nothing!”

Maybe it was the plague, maybe rabies. Rufus was still wrestling his victim, already limp as a ragdoll.

“C’mon, let’s go…” I said as Rufus started to gnawn his eyes. “What’s your name?”

“Naomi.”

“Meow, Naomi. Are you O.K.?”

“I -- whatever. He was just a fling.”

“Good. I’m your sister, Carrie.”

It was late in the evening, but New York City night is never completely dark. The light pollution bleeds to the sky, the shade is murky, somehow grey and purple at the same time. Naomi and I had arrived at an abandoned lot, a piece of wasteland by Van Siclen station. When everything else is lost, when everything is outlawed, there will still be markets like this, where cats of all kinds come together for conversation, relief and a sort of communion.

I was planning on leaving, and felt obligated to speak up and let anyone arrive at the same conclusion I had. I knew nobody would come with me, and that’s why I was able to speak up. Honestly, I didn’t want any company. Truth be told, I would have hated to involve anyone on my desperate quest, not knowing I could vouch for their brighter future.

“Why would there be anything in Manhattan for you?” Brandon demanded to know. “I don’t know why you won’t try Queens.”

Brandon was another half-brother. He looked like Freddy more than perhaps any of Freddy’s other kittens, he was some sort of arrogant upgrade of him. He was aggressive and offensive, which at times seemed petty but at least he was serious about what he believed in, and I couldn’t help but feel a bond with him for having this quality.

“Queens is just like Brooklyn! They have the exact same kind of problems we do; too many strays, too little rats, too much pest,” I argued.

“How do you know that, you don’t know that, shut up!”

Brandon was now on his feet, stepping back and forth like a frustrated zoo animal.

“Well, for starters, because you are here. What are you doing here, Brandon? Are you visiting or moving in? Maybe it’s all just a big coincidence!”

“You are telling me with a straight face that there is no rats in Brooklyn? I don’t believe you…”

“There is no reason to suspect otherwise.”

“Why don’t you just eat from the trash?” Naomi asked.

“Honestly, honey, we just don’t have the time to discuss that right now...”

There was a crowd forming around us now, which made me feel embarrassed. I had made up my mind and didn’t care to be questioned for it.

“I am confident that the plague is not there. The rats in Manhattan are born there or immigrated from the Bronx or further, neither is connected to us by more than just underground tunnels and bridges. The number of rats travelling on the rails is diminutive compared to the masses immigrating on land and surface sewers.“

“How the hell are you ever gonna get there? Train surfing maybe?” Brandon mocked me.

“Bronx is clean - I am sure of it. And so is Manhattan.”

“Why don’t you just go to Bronx then?”

“If this doesn’t work, I guess I’ll have to, eventually.“

“People on the Island will kill you. They’re gonna catch you, lock you up and put you to sleep. That, or you get hit by a taxi.”

“Why are you so hell bent on me not trying out Manhattan? Why are these boroughs the only way for you? We are gonna starve here. Is it worth it?”

“Hell yes it is, Carrie. There has to be something else, something bigger to live for except for yourself. There has to be a point that should not be crossed without losing yourself.”

“Are you really deciding for yourself that you are staying? Or are you just afraid? What if you’re a phony?”

“You did not just say that,” Brandon inhaled.

“I am not going to stay here and eat cats.”

Brandon was no longer listening to me. He actually seemed to be falling asleep, which I knew was an act. Cats can’t roll their eyes, but we can droop.

“Rufus killed -- what was it, dear?” I turn to Naomi.

“His name was Magnum,” Naomi whispered.

“Rufus ate Magnum, Naomi will testify,” I tried to push the attention away from myself.

“You sure you wanna do that?” Brandon hissed.

“I did see it. Right in front of me,” Naomi says.

“I saw Rufus some time ago, he ate something bad. I thought it was just food poisoning. Then this happened.”

“We’ll put him out of his misery.”

The congregation was scattered around a patch of suffered lawn, sitting about or lying around. When Giovanna sprinted over the street and wiggled her way through the crowd she reminded me of a tiny, black shepherd, plowing her way through a flock of pasturing cows.

“Is this true? Is Rufus gone?” she panted.

“In essence, yes,” I confirmed.

Giovanna stood catching her breath, trying to understand. It was difficult to interpret her expression, but I finally felt that someone was taking my words seriously. Encouraged by this, I turned to the crowd, to address them all.

“I’d rather lose myself in Manhattan than eat one of your faces. You can do whatever you want. I will not stand in your way, you won’t stand in mine.”

“I am gonna shut you up now, Carrie. You can’t scare us with your zombie stories.“

Brandon galloped up to me so smoothly it actually took me by surprise when he flicked me with his paw, claws stretched out. I fought him off with the determination not to let him make me look ridiculous just when I needed an elegant exit.

“Stop it!”

This is when Giovanna intervened. She stepped between us and arched her back - that’s all she had to do. Brandon backed off, confused by her dark, mysterious spunk.

“There have been enough unqualified leaders rising from Queens. Let your sisters be,” she muttered under her breath, her eyes burning.

We left together. Giovanna was the only cat I could have imagined to come along. Gia was different. She was independent, running alongside me, yet staying on her own path. I was happy it crossed with mine. We started running West on Highland Boulevard. For now, it felt good to run next to a busy driveway, with cars whooshing past, heading for Manhattan, same as us. I had never been past the Evergreens. Gia told me she was from Bushwick, the first but undoubtedly not the last convenient aspect she had to bring to the table during our journey.

“It’s really up to you, where you wanna go underground,” she advised me. “We could go down at Rockaway station tonight, or maybe spend the day in a park. There are few parks on the way. Many subway stops to choose from too.”

“I’m thinking we should stay at the park. At least try to eat something and sleep on green grass once more. But then we should go down. It’s safer --”

“Carrie!”

I almost stumbled as I heard the calling. I turned to look back to see Vincent across the road, on the Highland Park side. He was stepping on his paws, panicked. Cars kept going by, I could make out the whites of his eyes even from a distance.

“Stay there! I’ll come over to you!”

“Careful, Carrie,” Gia wished me.

Eventually the cars seized, forced by the traffic lights. I leaped across the driveway. He looked so different from the last I saw him. Actually, different from all he had been after his accident. Like he was reanimated. As if his heart had started really beating again just now.

“Did I make you do this?” he gasped.

My heart sunk.

“No, no. No way,” I assured him.

“Why do you parade around my turf like that?”

“I need to know you’re still there. That I am still here.“

“Well, I wish you didn’t,” he snapped.

I said nothing. If anything was for sure, I wouldn’t be going up to Cypress Hill in some time. Maybe ever again.

“What did I do wrong?”, he begged to know.

“You died. You got hit by a car and you died. And you came back…”

“But not really,” he finished my sentence. We had had this conversation before, of course. It was time to finish it.

“I am terrified that I might be stuck here. Something is missing. I wanna get it back,” he wept.

“You will,” I said, as a courtesy. I didn’t want to give him false hope, but I really didn’t know what else to say. I saw he knew I was lying.

“What’ll I do?”

“You just keep trying.”

Vincent shook his head like someone who knows they didn’t hear the right answer yet.

“Stay with me.”

“Vincent - I am not the solution --”

Suddenly, he laughed. A rather dry, joyless laugh, but still an unexpected reaction.

“I know, I know. I just had to try once more, I guess,” he snickered - the sound made the hair in my neck stick out. He radiated desperation, and it made me want to run away so bad it was difficult to stand still. I didn’t have that nurturing bone in me, not yet anyway, maybe not ever. Him clinging to me felt like I was forced into a boiling water pot.

Vincent, Freddy, Brandon… I had deserted them one by one. To live with them was to kill something in me. I deserted my appointed lives as a daughter, sister and as a wife. I was going to take care of myself from now on. Of course, I couldn’t say any of this to Vincent then and there. He was too brittle now, he would take it personally, and it really had nothing to do with him - this being something some toms found incomprehensible.

“We end up wanting something more just because it’s hard to get”, I whispered.

Vincent tilted his head, as if an invisible question mark did it for him.

“Loving is not supposed to be hard, you know,” he sighed.

“Will you forgive me?”

“I’ll have to see. Is there a worse insult than this?”

Me and Gia went underground somewhere on Brooklyn Broadway. First we made sure we were on the right side of the tracks. Getting on the train car with people was simply too risky, the humans wouldn’t leave us alone. Riding between the carriages was a valid possibility, but with the speed, the swooshing air and the godless screaming of the train, we were simply not ready to train surf. Neither of us could really read or even conceive that letters might mean something - so we climbed onto a sign hanging on the ceiling and watched the commuters for a while. After some time it was possible to guess correctly who was coming and who was leaving Brooklyn, even if we were still neck deep in the borough.

There were three toms following us - man to man zone offence and one on the bench. Maybe they followed us all the way from Van Siclen market. Maybe they were someone I knew or at least was supposed to know. What difference would it make? There was a routine to be speculated here. We could of course smell and hear them long before they came, and as much as we ought to know better, we didn’t think too much of them at first. Surely they are not here on our account. Surely they had something else to do.

“I got you now, huh?”

A ten pound russian blue scumbag threw me over like he was flipping a switch, his needle sharp nails pressed to my flesh, his whole weight on me. It wasn’t just a prick anymore, but a stunning sting. It made me pant. It hurt and felt good at the same time. I was completely helpless… but I didn’t feel helpless.

I wish it didn’t always happen to me this way, but for once more it did. A flimsy, brainless act of violence by a Brooklyn gangster made me realize something about myself I never would have otherwise. The more he drilled into me, the more pressure I felt lifted off me. Like a pagan sacrifice, nailed to a church door, I was ruined - and it made sense to me.

“Go on.”

“What?”

“Get on with it. I want you to. ”

That’s all it took. He jumped off, and ran away. Silently as a shadow. I already missed him. I was hooked. I knew I could never let this go. I would look for him from now on, a tom who could gain power over me, fight me off, nail me down, bite me hard, keep me at place, keep me under his mercy. I was changed, transformed into a different thing. I felt the potential in my guts, the genesis at the end of my tail. My head was spinning. At this point I was not sure what was real, what wasn’t. There was another train coming, I heard the rails booming like artillery, far away. I ran. I’m not dying this summer. I’m not dying this summer. I am not sure how much time passed, fifteen minutes or an hour. The shock started to wear off, leaving my limbs shivering from exhaustion. I felt faint... and then I did.

There would be no such silence in the tunnels of this city, except for the very first few moments of morning. Of course it wasn’t completely quiet, not even then, it never was. I had dust up my nostrils, my eyes were lined with rheum. Gia was gone.

What happened next was not sudden. It had been crawling up on me for some time. The scent had passed me here and there. It was faint, I assumed I was imagining it, or that it was just plain too old to trace. But now the estimate changed. There was no doubt in my mind - there was a rat in this tunnel with me.

I hopped on my paws, clumsily. I didn’t care who heard me. I didn’t care if the rat heard me. It wasn't just the rat I smelled: she had her babies with her, babies so tiny she carried them on her back. I knew a lot about the life of my prey, but why she is on the move with them right now, I’ll never know. These are strokes of fortune. Somebody’s emergency is my dumb luck. A wild card. It’s too flimsy to count on moments like this - but this summer, it’s these blessings that kept me alive. I saw them and started running. The rat ran too - but I was so much faster.

The rat was a stranger, until she wasn’t. Now she was as familiar to me as anybody. First I took her head into my mouth and I bit down on her neck. At first she suffocated, which made her wiggle, but then her spine softly cracked, and it was over. I gnawed her open, took out her guts and her fur. I took my time as I boned her. There is so little meat in rats… As it usually occurs when you find yourself getting what you want, when a prolonged urge is finally met, it just makes you see how tiny your dreams were. How little you ever asked for. But this time I got that and more. The babies. Their bones were so tiny, their skin so soft it stuck to my teeth. The back of my mouth bathed in their blood, their little lives, the dreams their mother had for them. I swallowed down their names and all the rats they were supposed to meet in this life and didn’t. They were graced, they really were.

I was replenished, now convinced that there was a way out of this place, from this life to the next, just waiting to be found.