Cat Wrongly Treated

This is NOT the cat referenced in the non-fiction or nonfiction account below. I pulled this image out of my own personal stock of domesticated carnivorous feline photos that I have been working on for years. Toby struck this pose for me out at Frank's farm last summer. The other evening I left the house in the auto for something further away and on a more dangerous route than I could have found by bike. As always the timing of my unplanned future had full synchro implications which became apparent just a few hundred meters down the street towards the Loch. When I passed the long tree lined drive way of my 8th neighbor down, once removed I noticed that the Vulcan looking teen age son of the house was in stride for the road holding his family's cat by the nape of the neck like a six pack while his little friend merrily tagged along in full toon garb. In a blink I focused forward on the lightly auto travelled neighborhood street so I would not blatantly run over any cyclists or pedestrians with the auto viper. I thought to myself how strange it seemed to see a limp cat being carried towards the street by a young man Spock thing and his Goo-Fi(like sci fi but gew fi) toon friend creation.

Although I was concentrating on the road ahead of me my mind immediately created a hologram on the inside front of my skull of what I had observed with my visual cortex just seconds prior. The interesting thing about our brains is that they make images in the mind's eye all of the time from three dimensions as if our brains were hologram machines. That was what I was doing without control at that second. Driving but watching the movie on my mind's screen of the kid, his eyes, his gait, the way the cat was limp as if dead, his little friend without a face tooning along, all of it within the context of my present awareness even capable of seeing this scene play in real time against a back drop of the white boards of the house behind them.

After the film rolled through and came to its end, the car and I were around about 100 meters down the street. I glanced up at the mirror and to my somewhat unfazed reverse corrected mind I watched Vulcan Boy stuff the comatose looking cat in the mailbox through the back door(yard facing) as his Toon Pal ran across the street and started Karate Style kicking the mail box directly across the street. At that second I stopped the car by applying the brake with my right foot. There were no other cars on the road, this is an old neighborhood by modern standards. In the mirror I watched Toon Pal continue his toon dramatic flying kick assault on the opposing mail box as simultaneously Vulcan Boy appeared on his side of the street to be leaning into and thus holding the back door of the mail box closed.

Even though my heart rate was up and thoughts of fear rolled into the top of my head I knew at that flash of a second that I was about to change the course of events that was going to happen without my intervention. It's like watching someone shoplift, no matter how much fear their scariness instills in you, you have to step in and call them out with truth. Anyways, I reversed the car into a close by drive and started right back for them still on opposite sides of the street. When Toon Pal saw me coming he must have realized that I was onto to them because he ran across the road from left to right and sheepishly stood behind Vulcan Boy who was still awkwardly leaning into the back door of the postal box. I only concentrated on VB who never broke eye contact as I lowered the passenger window electronically, an option my work bike lacks.

The first thing I said with my foot on the brake was, "What's in the box?" At first he stuttered himself into an awkward untruth silence which led to the lie, "Nothing", he responded. Knowing his bullshit, I repeated the question and this time he answered the truth albeit rather rationally and defensively, "My cat, it's my cat." I explained in a rather cop like tone that I give not a shit whose cat it is but let it out of the box and now. VB leaned off of the door and dropped it in almost one motion like he had wanted to do that all along. The white and orange tabby hit the ground running for the house face first at full speed. The cat was not dead at all earlier, he or she was just resigned to its destiny at the whim of VB and his little friend.

I looked up from the cat full speed pulling its way along the stone drive kicking up bits of dust and saw the eyes of VB. Vulcan Boy was waiting for what I was about to say which was that there are laws against cruelty to animals and they are extremely harsh on Juveniles in North Carolina. He seemed to acknowledge where I was going with this but he never looked away. I told him that I would never be afraid to file charges in cases of animal cruelty and that I lived right down the street. All of a sudden he blurted out, "I am sorry, I am sorry." At that point I almost laughed at him through the window but instead said, "You don't owe me an apology, you owe one to yourself every time you see your reflection in the mirror." My response cracked him out to the point of cower and lip twitch as I drove away a little cracked myself leaving him standing there a shade whiter than he was before...