Third Place winner of the "Black Cats are Good Luck" contest 2024
By Andrew Schley
The father enters the pound. The smell of dog shit and piss sifts and shifts through his nose and mouth. The ceaseless barks, cries, and whimpers pound and pierce his ears in varying frequencies. He walks down the aisle of cages. The pit bull to his left leaps and slams his front paws against the metal wire enclosing him. The father looks at the dog’s wagging tail, seeing the anticipation of companionship in the dog’s eyes. The dog’s ears fall back as he turns away. The pit bull barks and howls at him.
But he is not here for a dog. He must simply pass through this place. He is here to get a cat, to surprise his daughter with for her eighth birthday.
He enters the cat wing of the pound and walks past the multitude of cats, some brushing up against their glass encasings, some meowing, some yowling, some grooming themselves, some sleeping, some looking away. The father walks through looking for kittens. There are none. Just older cats. He thinks about leaving, about searching for kittens elsewhere. But his daughter’s birthday party is in two hours. His sister is watching his daughter for him right now, buying him what little time he has. He turns around to see two other cats, a beautiful long-haired calico cat and next to her, a scruffy black Maine Coon with a long beard. He walks up to their cases. Both of them approach him. Both friendly. Both perfectly healthy.
The father must now make a decision. One of these cats will serve as a lifelong companion for his daughter. They will lie coiled in her hair as she sleeps. His daughter will learn to nurture as she takes care of that cat. She will find comfort in the cat’s soft purrs through childhood broken bones and teenaged broken hearts. And she will cry more when her cat passes away than when her paternal grandfather does. So will her father.
And she will thank her father for giving her this pet as they scatter the cat’s ashes in the backyard under its favorite oak tree. They will still talk about the cat decades later as they laugh about the times the cat knocked a glass off the counter while the father stared right at them, or when the cat scared off the neighbor’s German Shepherd. When the girl is a woman, grown and married, she will put up pictures of the cat in her own home. Her children will know the cat’s name.
But sometimes the father will remember the unchosen cat and all of those dogs. He will think about the fact that the pound was a kill shelter. He will stumble under the immense shaping weight of choice, the immense shaping weight of chance.
Andrew Schley earned his MA in English from CSU Sacramento in 2021. His work has appeared in MacQueen’s Quinterly.
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