Zombie Cat
My boy walked in dizzy circles on the piss-stiffened carpet. He was gone already, in a way. His eyes were unseeing, and his already thin frame was now skeletal. And that awful hole in his face, the one that never quite finished scabbing over before he sliced it open again, was tinged with gray, drops of blood and pus leaking out. “Zombie cat” was what we used to call him. We never knew for sure how he got that hole in his face. It took up his entire left cheek, the fur around it crusty and matted. Most likely, and most horribly, it was an attack from his sister. My sweetest girl. I forget, sometimes, how they used to fight. When they were both young and spry, when they’d chase one another up and down the halls, paws batting paws, claws cutting ears and noses. It never troubled us much, their stints of violence. It was much more common to find them curled together in a spiral on the same couch cushion, him a pale orange, her a dark gray; a yin and yang. He was often sickly. Undoubtedly ...