LATIN FOR THE SEA

Steinbeck's Take On Love

I went to work at the grocery store, and my cat tagged along as usual. The grocery store was in a large warehouse that was shared by a neighboring auto mechanic, and the cat would wander freely back and forth. I was stacking some fruit when a woman came up to me and told me that she had seen a cat on the loose here several times, and if she saw him again she was going to take him. I got really worried and started looking for my cat. I saw him walk into the back room and ran after him. When he saw that I was trying to catch him he ran away, and I chased him down the hall and out the back door where he scaled a fence and jumped down to the other side.

I ran to the front of the warehouse, around the mechanic’s and to the side where my cat had escaped to. I saw him on the other side of the street, approaching some kind of rodent that stood still on the sidewalk. I watched as my cat tried to coax the rat to come with him, and it struck me that they were close- they knew each other. The rat tried to go one way, and my cat grabbed it and started dragging it the other way. He didn’t want to let the rat go. When the rat started to struggle, my cat put the rat’s head in his mouth and very slowly started biting down- it seemed he was trying to get the rat to calm down. All of a sudden I could see with extreme detail that my cat was applying more and more pressure- I saw his teeth slowly fracture the rat’s skull, its head contorting slightly. The rat let out a long, high pitched moan that wouldn’t stop. Its mouth was wide open, and it opened wider and wider. Like an extreme zoom, its mouth filled my vision, opening wider until it looked like it would break backwards, with that pitiful cry filling my ears.

Then I woke up.

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I was packing up the car, and had several kittens in a box that I was going to take to the vet. We were someplace like the house I grew up in, the house was at the top of a small hill and there was a wooded area off the side of the road at the bottom. I saw one of the kittens roaming around near the wooded area and I asked my father to try and go get him. All of a sudden two large creatures appeared out of the shadows, they looked like large shaggy cats with no tails. I heard my father say “uh oh.” They approached the kitten and I knew they were going to try and kill it. I yelled at my father to try and stop them, but he just stood there with his arms crossed, shaking his head. I screamed at him to do something, even though I knew he was old and in pain and could not get there in time. I yelled at the wild cats to try and scare them. They cornered the kitten against a log and one slowly bit the kitten’s neck. I ran down the hill yelling and they all scattered. I chased the wounded kitten into the woods and as I searched I knew the wild cats were nearby and would come after me. I managed to grab the kitten and I felt its sticky blood on my hands. The kitten squirmed with pain, jumped out of my arms, and ran off into the shadows. I stood there among the trees looking at the blood on my hands, there were lots of dry yellow leaves all over the ground and the light was very golden, and I knew that the kitten was going to die somewhere.

Then I woke up.