It Hurts · 11 November 2001
The doctor spoke reasonable English, and we joked a bit.
—And where are you from?
—Canada. Vancouver. But I live here now.
—Then we should work on your French while I do this.
—Yes. Let’s conjugate irregular verbs.
—Nous saignons, vous saignez…
—Do you have an opinion on Serge Gainsbourg?
—Yes.
For weeks a wild cat – small and white, a punk – had been a problem: sneaking into the house to steal food, getting into shrieking scraps with the house cat, taking swipes at the dog. After I was irritated enough to start blocking obvious points of entry it’d howl for hours outside, fleeing like a rocket when the door opened. Right over the rail from a crouch, landing at a run three metres below, six away.
This past Thursday I went out to the terrace and – both of us surprised – it was cornered. I reached down to grab it by the scruff, thinking, I don’t know, I’d toss it off and show it who’s boss, and it turned in a millisecond from a crouching animal to a blur of teeth and claws and fur and hiss: all street logic and survival instinct. It was an explosion of cat, and he got me. Three slashes on the back of my right hand before taking flight. Razor claws, delayed blood.
Applying mercurochrome and bandages, war was quietly declared.
It just kept showing up: leaping onto the terrace from the roof, sneaking in when the back door was left briefly ajar, violently mugging the cat. I kept thinking it’d get the picture and go assault another household, but it just kept coming back, relentless and ever more violent.
—It’s in the house. Do you want to do something?
—You’re god damn right I want to do something.
I stormed out and returned in gardening gloves and thick jacket. I laughed like a very ugly man while it chomped and swiped at the thick rubber. As it sailed out the window I said Now. Just. Fuck. OFF.
It didn’t hit the ground running this time. It simply hit the ground. I went outside and found it folded and conscious, eyes wide and burning, bone peeking out from a broken foreleg.
The answer to the question is yes.
I began feeling violent flu symptoms last night: swollen glands, dizziness, one big ache. Not a lot of sleep amid all the sweat. This afternoon, as a storm was starting, I went outside to bring in bicycles, and I remember feeling woozy, shoving the bikes in, as the garage door – flung up quickly and sloppily in the rain – came smashing down on my head.
The doctor confirmed that the scratches on my hand were the likely cause for the grippe. Maladie des griffes du chat; cat scratch fever.
—It usually shows up three days after a run-in with a wild cat. It comes as it goes.
I feel like utter shit, my hair matted by blood and antiseptic around the stitches. Outside, past the garden, past the compost, past the unused field, the cat’s grave, for now, an inescapable beacon.
* * *