The Cat in the Garden

“Why are you just sitting there in the dirt?” my cat asks. Not literally, of course. I can just see it on its face. “That’s my thing, to just sit there in the dirt and stare at shit. Stop copying me.”
  
“Stop copying me” I reply, voice laden with snark. If I were typing it’d be in mixed capitalization. 

“Yeah, very mature. Shouldn’t you be working?” 

“I’m working from home, asshole.”
 
The cat is nonplussed. The sun beats relentlessly on its gray fur through the hazy blue sky, casting a fraudulent, well-fed shadow on the little mound of dirt it’s situated on. If it would sweat, it would.
 
“I dunno, I just got sidetracked. There’s not a lot to do. Everything is growing. I watered everything. I pulled the weeds. I picked the stuff that’s ready to be picked. There’s enough herbs drying in the kitchen for six months. So I figured I’d just sit in the dirt and take a break.”
 
“Doesn’t sound like you got sidetracked then, does it? Kinda sounds like a conscious decision.” 

“High philosophy from someone who spends so much time licking their own ass.”

The idea that the cat’s getting so high and mighty when it’s doing the same thing I am is ludicrous. It’s sitting directly on its asshole in the hard, baked clay of the garden same as I am. It’s wincing its eyes in the face of the hot desert breeze same as I am. Its breath stinks of cat food same as mine does.
 
“Okay, fine. I don’t actually care about what you’re doing out here. You’re right, I’m being a hypocrite.” 

“Nice to hear you admit it.”

“What I really care about is-” the cat pauses to take a few exaggerated licks of its fur, trying and failing to lick the part of its chest directly below its chin. “You’ve been eating too much of my food. I can’t eat peas and beans and corn, you know? And I’m worried because I don’t know where or when you’re gonna get more cat food, given the state of the world.”
 
“Oh… well, I’d never let you starve, okay? I love you! You’re my sweet little baaaaabyyyyy.” I reach out to pet the cat but it swats at me. Its bare, rough beans graze my hand like sandpaper.
  
“Stop it! I’m being serious! I don’t have any claws, okay? I can’t hunt.” 

“Don’t you put that on me! Don’t you dare! I didn’t do that to you.”
 
The cat hisses a long, deliberate hiss. I swear I can hear it echoing off the dust-stained stucco of the house, but it’s probably just the breeze.
 
“I would never do that to a kitty! And I’d have adopted you even if I knew things would turn out like this!”

“You can’t prove that.”
 
“Do I have to prove it? I know it,” I say, jabbing my chest with my finger. “I’m not much of a hunter either. Is that my fault now? That I can grow things but I can’t hunt? How the hell was I supposed to know I’d need to be able to hunt? I wasn’t trained for this. I can’t hunt, my dad couldn’t hunt, his dad couldn’t hunt, but I still need to eat, same as you! What the hell do you want me to do about that?”

“I was trained to hunt, but I can’t! Do you know how that feels?”

“What would you know about trying to provide for a family?”  
 
“Oh, is that what we are now, a family? Could have fucking fooled me!” The cat goes to turn away but decides better of it. The yard is littered with spiny seed pods – I heard someone call them goatheads – so moving is a dodgy proposition. We’d both rather take the stationary numbness than risk getting stabbed by the goatheads.
 
“We’ve always been a family you little shit. I didn’t scoop your shit out of a box because I was bored.”

“I wouldn’t have to shit in a box if you’d let me outside, you know.”

“I couldn’t let you outside, you don’t have any claws! You’d be defenseless!”

“Exactly!”

It’s a standoff. The cat will clearly not accept that I’ve done my best, and I will not accept that I am to blame for it being declawed. I did not declaw the cat. Sure, maybe I’d roughed around with it more than a regular cat because it couldn’t scratch me, but that’s the extent that I took advantage of its lack of claws. And, for the record, I don’t think declawing is wrong because of some Darwinian bullshit reason, or because I knew the world would go to shit and I’d need a little tiny tiger to help feed myself. I think it’s wrong because it’s maiming a kitty and kitties don’t deserve that.
 
I’m staring at the cat. The cat is staring at me. I know the cat will win because it’s an animal. Animals are good at this shit. Like, you’ll see a video of a buffalo fighting off hyenas with its guts hanging out of its belly and it’s still going at it even though you know there’s no way in hell it’ll survive even if it wins, and you know that animals are better at surviving than humans. They have that kind of raw instinct that humans don’t have anymore. The cat could probably have hunted even without claws, it’d have figured it out. I’d starve before I figured out how to hunt even if I had a gun. The only way I can win is to be an animal. Channel my inner animal, be like the cat, and I’ll be alright.
 
The breeze picks up until it’s a stiff wind. Classic desert weather. Dust blows up off the ground and through the cat’s fur. It’s still staring at me with those predator eyes.
 
Wood groans and a crack splinters the air. I snap my head to the side to see what’s going on, animal instincts coming back bit by bit. Across the wall, in the next lot, the dilapidated house finally collapses. It’s been a long time coming.
 
A plume of dust billows up into the air and the wind blows it over the wall into my garden. It whips across the cracked ground and whistles through the drought-battered remains of my plants, snapping dry, dead twigs off as it goes. A little eddy forms over the cat’s grave, caught in place by the miniature headstone. I breathe through my nose to keep the grit out of my mouth. My breath stinks of cat food.