issue #12

IMAGES

shane allison

WORDS

j.s.

writer

bio

free thought email #1,126

It’s Thanksgiving evening. My heater is on to protect me from the cold outside. My stomach is full to bursting with ham, turkey, stuffing, potatoes and probably a dozen different types of casserole. Our two obese cats are swirling around my legs as I sit in our office. I’m at the house alone, because my wife is with her mother. Tomorrow they’re going to bake Christmas cookies.

Outside our front door, maybe eight feet from where I’m sitting, a small calico cat is crying. I can hear her through the front door as I type. I’m sure she’s cold and hungry.

She was there last night when Michelle and I got home, sitting on the welcome mat outside our door, which is presumably warmer than the concrete. We think our neighbors dumped her on the street when they moved out a few weeks ago. She doesn’t seem used to living outside alone. She cried last night until we broke; I dumped a bowl full of food in the grass beside our house and put out some water. I couldn’t listen to the creature starve. I put out more food tonight and she ate it.

But now she’s still outside, frightened and alone.

We can’t take her in because she’s a stray. Michelle is eight months pregnant, we have two cats, and we can’t risk letting a stray cat into our house.

Michelle and I went to the hospital yesterday for her checkup. The doctor checked the baby’s heartbeat and I heard it, clear and strong. I had never imagined being a father, saying the phrase -- “I’m a father” -- is still foreign to me, like I’m making a joke about it. But the reality of it is powerful and… I don’t know how to describe it. Simply that I am about to be part of something that is more important than anything I’ve ever done. I’m about to be part of bringing another life into this world.

This world.

And outside the cat is still crying. Michelle says she knows it’s a “she” because diluted calicos are all female. When I step outside she looks at me like I can save her. But I can’t. I can’t save all of them.

Tomorrow I have to go back to work. They say the economy is the worst it has been since the great depression. To anyone who has been paying attention, this should come as no surprise. Our entire economy is based on excess, buying on credit that which we cannot afford. We think everyone is entitled to a large house, a foreign car, a Japanese flat-screen television, cable, internet and a dozen casseroles when we want them. And we buy all this on credit while shipping our jobs overseas. It had to come to an end. I don’t know how long my job will be around, considering the plight of the newspaper business right now, but I enjoy it more than any other job I’ve ever had. And at least I have a job.

It’s a plaintive cry. It’s a kitten wanting to be scratched on the head, rubbed on the belly.

I did a story last winter about the local animal shelter where I drove around with the Hamilton dog warden for a day. They said they catch 70 stray cats a week. They put them all to sleep because they simply have no place to put them. They can’t afford to feed them, no one will adopt that many cats and if they let them run free they will reproduce and the problem will get worse. So they kill them. They showed me a freezer full of dead cats, all sprawled out and rigid as death.

Michelle took a picture of the cat on our porch this morning. We showed it around when we went to Thanksgiving dinner both at my parent’s house and at hers. My father wasn’t there. His job sent him to Germany this week, so he got to spent Thanksgiving with my brother, his girlfriend and my beautiful niece and nephew. My mother gave me money today to buy a coat. She would give me the coat off her back if she didn’t have the money. At Michelle’s parents house, I watched as everyone talked. She probably didn’t notice, but her father and grandfather each took a moment and looked at the woman she had become. They smiled. I do that to when I think about her. I love her.

It’s a timid mew, the kitten’s cry. Occasionally a yowl sadder than any song ever written. In that moan I hear distant gunshots, dozens dead in India. I hear the children of Mogadishu. I hear the young sons and daughters of laid-off factory workers watching their parents sit at kitchen tables trying to figure out when the world changed without them. I hear the sorrowful song of a winter. Mournful, alone.

I’ll be here by myself -- turtle, two cats and co-workers notwithstanding -- one more night. Michelle’s mother will drop her off at the house Saturday. It will be a month before the cookies are done. Just in time for Christmas, when I’ll open presents from others and likely get the greatest one of all this year: a new life.

And a renewed life. Michelle is due to deliver Christmas Eve. I have plenty to be thankful for.

Outside the kitten has stopped crying. No one answered.

Peace,

JS

JS is an expectant father in Hamilton, OH. For more of his writing, visit the archives, or click here.