THE CAT'S MAW

CHAPTER VII

VII:  OF VETS AND VISIONS

The family car sped through the countryside, its beige curves rolling beneath sheets of grey draped high above.

The Brahms may have lived in a small town, but today they were definitely headed for the country. They passed by endless fields of cattle and corn, acres of tilled brown earth, and orchards that stretched up the valley to meet the horizon.

Stanley whistled as he drove, calling out the names of any ‘foreign’ license plates he spotted. Elizabeth, anxious and claustrophobic, kept adjusting the air conditioning. Billy had wanted to lower the windows so he could stick out his hand and surf the passing air, but his mother was quick to nix the urge. 

“You never know. He could get spooked and jump out the window. Who’d be sorry then, hmmm?” she had said.

But Billy knew his mother wasn’t really being cautious. She just didn’t like the smell of manure.

A week had passed since the wasp attack and the boy was feeling a bit better, all things considered. The swelling had gone down, with only small crusts lingering to mark the sting sites on his torso, arms, and bare leg.

But the venom and the stress had conspired to make his psoriasis flare back up. Billy wore a long-sleeved plaid shirt to hide the silvery spots, and had asked to cut the right leg off one of his pairs of jeans to conceal it.

“I’m not going to destroy a perfectly good pair of pants because you’re self-conscious,” she had said. “No one will even notice. Not everything’s about you.”

Billy held a cardboard box in his lap, and teased his fingers in the holes that Mrs. Thomas had cut in the sides. He felt a paw swat at them, and wee teeth gnaw playfully. 

Enid had visited after the incident (with pie, of course), and listened to Billy reenact everything that happened in the fort. His parents stood close by, nodding politely and making the odd remark about his ‘vivid and dramatic imagination’. 

“What’s done is done,” Enid had said. “You were looking out for your little friend. The least I can do is the same.”

The old woman had insisted on making the appointment with the animal doctor, despite Elizabeth’s protests – wasp stings were bad enough for a small boy, and the cat had suffered several of his own. When Enid assured them that it would be free (‘He owes me a favour or two from all the repeat business.’), Billy’s mother had acquiesced.

That’s when the boy told Mrs. Thomas about his dream.

His mother had been quick to usher Enid out the front door then, with a promise to pick up her homemade cat-carrier later in the day. She had heard more than enough about her son’s strange dreams, and questions about his leg, and foolishness about talking cats. The only things she wanted to hear next, after sending the old lady on her way, were the sweet sounds of country music and the popping of a cork.

Billy felt the cat scurry in circles inside the box. It chased after his fingers, and tried to poke its nose out one of the larger holes. Billy tickled the moist pink flesh as it sniffed at the air.

The cat gave his finger a lick with its sandy tongue, retreated, and then pushed up through the cardboard flaps. Its head bobbed up and down with the rhythm of the car, and it turned to watch the green and grey world blur by the window.

“Put him back inside and close the lid right now!” his mother scolded. “If he gets loose and crawls under the pedals, we could have an accident.”

“He won’t do that,” Billy said. “He’s just taking a look.”

“Don’t argue,” she said. “Tell him, Stanley.”