DUST IN YOUR EYES

‘Bury the body two feet deep,’ said the vet, making a rough measure with quick hands. ‘And do it fairly promptly.’ Her eyelids fluttered over eyes unseeing. ‘Because of the decomposition. And the seepage.’

The vet placed the cat in the black body bag, folded the top of the bag and stapled the two corners. ‘I wouldn’t want to bury the body in the bag, if I were you. It wants to break down.’

The man did not remove the body from the bag that night. He left the cage in a corner of the laundry.

His own pillow, he noticed, was smeared with brown streaks and a small, hard stool had rolled down on to the sheet. He picked it up and examined it. The cat’s final statement, he thought. Life’s a bummer. Huh, typical. The previous night the cat had yowled for the man to lift her up on to the bed. She dragged herself across the hillocks of his body up to the pillow and pressed her head against his cheek.

I don’t understand women, he thought, wincing at the sick-smelling draught of the cat’s wheezing. And calculated that it must be all of sixteen years since his missus had done a bunk, setting up house in Dandy with their kid. He’d bought the cat with grumpy reluctance for his son’s eighth birthday, as long as the boy took responsibility. ‘You can leave that cat behind,’ said his wife to the boy. ‘I don’t want no cat soiling my new carpets. And that’s straight.’

For years the man left the cat to fend for herself. Rarely did he wonder how she survived, though sometimes he’d glimpse her scavenging on the compost heap, chasing blackbirds and teasing mice. One day she broke her jaw in a fall from the rafters in the shed, probably reaching out for nesting sparrows.

So he took in the cat, whose snaggled jaw was set in uneven rictus. After her kidneys were shot and her ears eaten away by mites, he found himself rushing at Next Door’s Doberman that roughed her up in the backyard.

On the morning after the fatal injection, the man slept long and deep. There was no cat to disturb him. Rising from the fuddle of sleep, though, he heard the eerie yowling of a cat wracked by pain.

But no, the lump in the bag in the cage in the laundry had not stirred.

Lew Jago used to say, ’Sorry, can’t come round for a skinful, mate, ‘cos I’m allergic to cats.’ And whenever Mavis Cuddon delivered Neighbourhood Watch newsletters, she made a point of declaring, ‘I smell a sick cat in this house.’

But when the man tentatively opened up the body bag, there was no smell emanating. Except for the faint, plasticky smell of the bag itself. Looking slightly askance, he put his hand in beyond the crease and touched a firm log of body. Running his palm along its slightly frizzled coat, he located a leg, the front leg, where the vet had shaved off a couple of inches of fur. The bald patch was marbly white, the leg stiff and cold. Still he could not bring himself to remove the body.

The man chose a spot between the rhubarb and roses where the parsley had grown spindly. The cat liked to bellyflop on the wooden border to sharpen her claws, stretch and have a big yawn. He jiggled the fork into the crust, then tossed the cakes of dirt back over the dried-out stalks of pumpkin and tomato.

The soil in mid-autumn was that dry. He knelt down and chipped away at the seams of clay beneath with a trowel. It was slow work and he jarred his palm on the handle. The hole was not deep. But square enough to lay the cardboard shirt-box.

The man turned to the body bag. ‘Come on, old bean. Time for your last kip.’ He reached his hand into the bottom of the bag. In anticipation of the slime inside, he held his breath. Gingerly, he pulled out the cold body, curved but stiff, as if held together by internal wires, somehow heavier in death.

Now curious, he looked closely at the body, fingering the fur for fleas, even maggots. He allowed himself a flicker of a smile. Though terribly thin, a ribwork of bones, the cat was clean and groomed, her coat jet black after he’d combed out the tufts of dead white hair for the vet’s benefit.

Then the man dared look at the narrow Burmese face. It was too small, pinched, her eyes like mouldering grapes ready to slide from their sockets. The last time he had looked straight into those eyes, the vet was already inserting the needle . . . ‘You can talk to her . . . She’s going now . . . Just as soon as I take out the needle’ . . . But even in that very instant before death, the cat lifted her head, eyes dilating with fire, as if she were struggling to defy the inevitable. Then just as quickly the head sank, her eyes crossed and glazed over, her body slumped.

It was now in the backyard that the man kissed the cat for the first time. She had frequently head-butted him long before dawn, waking him for breakfast or simply for recognition, but he’d only shove her away and mutter something about sleep or hygiene or bloody women. Now he lifted the body with tenderness, careful not to snap off a limb or even bend an ear as he fitted her into the shirt-box. He lowered the box into the hole and scooped the pile of dirt back over the lid.

From his kitchen window, shortly afterwards, the man watched Next Door’s cat pissing on the grave.

Later, on his return from the milk bar, the man was overwhelmed by a peculiar odour at the front path. Recently he had sprinkled some moopoo on the feijoa tree to coax some fruit, but this odour was unusually sweet. The roses were too straggly now and the boysenberry bramble lay exhausted after being spray-poisoned by Next Door.

The man made his way round the weatherboard to the vegie patch. Sometimes Next Door’s cat would do his business on the soil or even the bald patches of lawn in a display of contempt. But the odd droppings were already breaking down and covered in dust.

The man stood over the grave. The topsoil had been disturbed, but the lid of the shirt-box was not exposed. He breathed in deeply, as if sniffing the bouquet of an unknown wine. His sense of smell seemed strangely acute today. Yes, that mysterious sweet odour wafted all about him. Perhaps he was losing his marbles, only imagining that this odour issued from the cat’s grave. Like that bloody pop music blasting out from Next Door’s lounge: even when the stereo wasn’t playing, he could still hear the thump-thump rattling his head.

Then he recalled that final time when he picked her up, limp but obstinate, to put her in the cage. She had leaked urine down his shirt. Hardly surprising, considering all the water she’d been drinking since refusing her grub. And she always was cantankerous on her odd visits to the vet’s. He yanked his shirt out from his old work trousers and lifted the folds to his face. Yes, his clothes still smelt of cat. And there were scratch marks on the back of his right hand when she had resisted the kidney tablets tooth and claw.

Funny, he thought, how this bloody cat makes her presence felt after she’s carked it. More so than when she was mooching about the place. But this strange odour was not the smell of stale urine or rotting feces or vegie scraps on the compost heap.

The man went emu-bobbing round the garden, as he used to at Mortlake in his younger days, breathing in slowly, deeply, steadily. Then he went back to the patch of grave, half-expecting the cat to scamper towards him, except that in her twilight she would stumble into things and tumble down steps. As sure as eggs, there was a sweet odour in the air, quite pungent. But then that sweetness hung all about him, hung about the backyard, hung all about the garden.

In his bewilderment, the man knelt down and smoothed over the unkempt dirt on the cat’s grave.


Michael Small

April 24, 1992

prize-winner: VFAW Short Story Award, 1992
published: ANU Reporter, ACT, no.22, 1992