A neighbor came to our door on a September evening to tell us our cat was dead in the middle of the street. We lived in the ground floor apartment of an old house at the corner of an unmarked intersection. It was a neighborhood where street parking was tight. If drivers had a clear shot at the cross street, they often punched the gas and rocketed through.

Glen put down his beer and went to see what had happened. I stayed where I was on the old sofa with busted springs. 

“Maybe it’s not our cat,” I said as Glen went outside, feeling a stab of pain like you get when you walk up a hill too fast. I moved to the open doorway and quietly called for our cat. The autumn air had a bite to it that cut through my thin top. I could hear a siren several blocks away near the hospital. 

Glen came up the walkway and said, “You better come look.”

I left the front door ajar, not wanting to get locked out with our sleeping baby inside, as had happened a month earlier. Shivering, I folded my arms across my chest and walked down the steps. The stitch in my side became a stone in my stomach. Glen turned and went with me to the curb, then we squeezed between the car bumpers. 

When I stepped from behind Glen, I saw Agnes, motionless on the pavement. Circled around her were six neighborhood cats. A black tom approached and touched his nose to her ear. The others gazed at Agnes with somber expressions. None spared a glance our way. Our cat’s short white fur with tabby patches looked perfectly groomed, except for the blood pooling beneath her head. Her green eyes, open wide, reflected the streetlight.

Glen pulled off his t-shirt and went to pick her up. The funeral came to a halt, and the cats scattered. A longhaired ginger we called Orange Fluffy lingered on the parking strip, her tail twice its usual size. She and Agnes had spent summer afternoons lolling on the warm sidewalk, drunk on heat. 

Glen wrapped the shirt around the pliable body, then gently lifted Agnes. When we got to the porch, he handed her to me.

“Hold her while I get the shovel,” he said.

“She needs a towel.”

I stood there cradling our cat and listening for the baby. Crouched under parked cars and beneath deeply shadowed shrubs lurked the mourners, their bright eyes showing brief flashes of yellow. A disheveled man hurried past the house clutching a bag from the liquor store, giving me a quick nod as he passed. The cat’s blood soaked through the t-shirt onto the inside of my arm. 

Agnes had been our initial attempt at parenthood. She climbed our Christmas tree twice as a kitten and brought it down both times. That was when we had the small apartment upstairs, above our current place. The location had the benefit of being within walking distance to Glen’s favorite bars, which I knew figured into his decision to move in with me.

Glen came back with a threadbare towel and a shovel.

“Where should we bury her? Back by the alley?”

“No, not there. I want her here in front, under the rose bush.”

Glen started digging. The fall rains had softened the ground, and the grave was soon ready. I could hear men arguing at the other end of the block. Glen put the towel around Agnes then set her in the hole. The soiled t-shirt hung limply from my hand. Blood congealed on my arm. I looked around for a flower to put on her body, but everything in the yard was dead. I reached under the towel to stroke her coat one last time, then Glen loaded the shovel and began filling the hole.

The sound of dirt landing in the pit was amplified by the darkness. When the hole was nearly filled, I thought I heard the baby crying and rushed back inside. I entered the house, but all was quiet. The only sound came from my own throat.

Glen finished, rinsed the shovel, then entered the house and washed his hands for a long time in the bathroom. 

He found me in the nursery, holding the baby, stroking the damp little head. I wondered how I was supposed to protect a child from all the things I hadn’t thought of yet. My parents had probably confronted the same concerns starting out, had done they best they could, and bad stuff had happened anyway.

Glen said, “You’re getting blood on his pajamas.”

I didn’t answer him. I grabbed a small quilt and carried the baby out to the porch and sat on the top step in the dark. Near eleven, the mourners returned to keep vigil at the patch of newly spaded dirt, ignoring me as before. They slipped away in the early hours, to go back to their secret lives where someone fed them and knew their names.