The Cat
Oh, the Little Things in Life...
The cat would return to haunt me, of that much I was sure.
Nor was it a black cat, or one from some ancient fable or superstition: just an ordinary, nondescript kitten with slightly crossed eyes.
My lunch break, the sole respite about noon on harvest days that more often than not ran ten to twelve hours, six days a week, was too short for anything but a sprint to the car, simmering in the September heat, slipping it into drive and tearing down the Gordonsville Road toward Ruckersville.
Dee’s Market was no market: it was generic in the extreme, like some artist’s rendition of what a convenience store in the rural Virginia countryside might be like. The gas pumps. The ice locker near its double glass doors in front. The sign above the door. The one or two nearby picnic tables shaded from the noon heat by umbrellas.
With long days of processing tons of grapes from the unending caravan of incoming flatbeds, there was no time to think about lunch, or preparing lunch or shopping for groceries. It often took a moment or two of reflection to ask whether the ache was hunger or muscle strain.
Dee’s met that midday need for local truckers, the farmers and loggers who took a thirsty break. The Market catered to the dirty, sweaty clientele by stocking fresh fried chicken, quarter slices of pizza on the circular tin shelves of a glass kiosk, and a slide door beer cooler with refreshing cola in slanted arrays that would slide the next bottle to the fore when one was extracted.
It was with anticipation of a savory slice of Meat Lover’s pizza, that I stopped at the wrought iron exit to scan the road both ways, exercising perhaps excessive caution to match the fatigue.
Out on the highway, the small form in the oncoming lane caught my eye, and it was a shock to see the alert head and eyes of a kitten looking around despite its posture of lying on its side.
I had slowed at the car that had pulled off and watched its occupants, a couple of late middle age, emerge and cross the road as if checking a roadside mail box.
The road is straight almost as far as the eye can see, and I spied the accelerating form of a sports car speeding my way, directly toward the kitten.
I waved from my open window, checked the rearview and stood waving my arms madly, but the dust gray sports car continued, accelerating, apparently oblivious of my demonstration to slow down, rolling right over the cat as I clenched my teeth in horror and swallowed my breath.
In the flash of sun glinting off chrome and metal flake finish, it was a moment or two before I realized the cat had been close enough to the middle of the lane to escape, and in a moment I was over it, noting no injury, no blood, no rent flesh or obscene contortions.
She looked up at me playfully.
Scooping her up, I was at roadside, walking calmly across the drainage ditch to the nearest suburban lawn, and gently laid her down in the shade of a birch tree.
She made no attempt to flee or stand, and remained alert, but lying on her side as I was suddenly overwhelmed, and I continued on to Dee’s after shouting to the couple at roadside whether they had lost a cat.
Consciously, I made the usual flirtatious small talk with the young woman who shuffled my slice of pizza into a take-out box, and chatted with the elderly check-out lady whom I had seen almost every day for two months.
But beneath the surface, there raged the debate about responsibility and action, what the best course was in such situations, whether I ought to have taken the cat back to the winery, or later, home with me, and the effect of another cat on the farm household and family.
I had no idea whether that kitten had been stunned, or had internal injuries: its external appearance was of active engagement with its surroundings devoid of fear or pain or stress.
It was surprising to find the instinct to preserve life at any level and any cost, was automatic, unthinking, and singularly divorced from any rational response.
As the afternoon progressed, the weight and immediacy of hauling thousand pound palettes of strap-bound grape lugs from the flatbed, consumed all thought, energy and concentration.
There were the usual moments of weariness, the mind-numbing jump from hoses and filling gigantic stainless steel tanks with grape must, to taking chemistry samples, to cleaning and sanitizing equipment and making it ready for the next future wine.
But that kitten set under a shade tree in front of the suburban home near the winery entrance, very much underpinned all else.
In what seemed an instant, noon went to afternoon, past dinner time without let up, and I found myself, engine idling in the darkness, near that same wrought iron gate headed home, simultaneously reliving the near fatal accident caused by a hyperagressive young chief winemaker’s arrogance that afternoon and setting my mind on careful driving.
In that moment behind the wheel, headlights illuminating the Gordonsville road ahead, there was no traffic at that late night hour and I took a moment or two longer than necessary before heading out on the hundred mile journey between my exhausted body, and my bed in Loudoun County.
Should I look?
The darkened lot next door was opposite my usual commute direction.
What if the cat were still there?
As I had driven away from the shade tree earlier at noon, I had seen two large, aggressive dogs creeping toward the road and growling, perhaps challenged by my intrusion with the cat.
What if?
My overwrought mind was steeled for almost any carnage at the place where I had saved the kitten.
I pulled into the driveway across the road: there was a car parked near the house, but without sign of lights or life.
The sky above seemed wide and deeper than usual and I was aware of that peculiar state of imagination and emotion brought on by the struggle to transcend exhaustion, as well as the coursing in the veins of endorphins and caffeine and testosterone that makes a man suddenly aware of the unusual sensation of being alive that is normally hidden, and passes unnoticed.
The light I took had a red lamp: it is designed to illuminate cockpits during night flights in a way to prevent the shock of full level illumination which compromises assessment of flight instruments.
There rose the tree. The house was illuminated from outside but unoccupied. The sign advertising it as being on the real estate market was close by.
I knew I had reached the place.
The lawn was empty in all directions.
* * *
It was a peculiar drive home.
I had faced the decision to save the kitten several times and had always acted on instinct.
Perhaps that powerful deep response underpinned my absolute attitude against abortion.
It was my mother’s empathy, her love of gardens and the patients she served for years as a registered nurse. It was my instinct as a formally trained biologist, a fascination with the movement and mystery of the humpback whales we had seen years back off Cape Cod. The inability to look away from the microscope while viewing cancer cells dividing in a plastic culture dish.
It was the shuddering revulsion at the dusky sports car driver who had ignored my frantic waving for their attention, whom, I am convinced, I would have beaten to a pulp if I had caught up with them, given my state of exhaustion and the simmering hormonal state brought on by gangs of aggressive men struggling with the physical and unreasonable contest that is wine grape harvest.
But then, it was just a kitten and not everyone is obsessed with a deep reverence for life as seems common and obvious to all biologists.
The kitten would return to haunt me, but I had not been forced to make a decision.
It had been taken out of my hands, and I was grateful.
How that incident on Route 33 that noon, would inform what I would do and what I would write in the coming weeks remained uncertain, but that I would write was never in doubt.