TouchedByMadness

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The first house I remember living in wasn’t exactly a prime piece of real estate. When the three-year-old can point out the friendly neighborhood crackhouse, you know you’re in a bad area.

Because our neighbors were a colorful assortment of characters you’d half-expect to see featured on an episode of Cops, we tried to keep to ourselves . . . and keep them away. There’s something about finding a teenage boy sneaking around your property–a book of matches in one hand, a fistful of dry leaves in the other–that makes you get territorial.

My mother was a homemaker and security guard, responsible for raising the kids and protecting the castle. She was excellent at both. Not only did Mom have the patience and endurance to rock my colicky sister every night until she finally descended into a fitful sleep, but she also managed to gently persuade our wifebeater-clad neighbor Leroy to stop tearing up the hill on his motorcycle at two in the morning (she told him she’d string a cable between the telephone poles and decapitate his Harley-loving ass).

By the time my brother came along, Mom was an old pro at sheltering us from the unpleasantness of our surroundings.

My mother and my baby brother spent many of their days sitting on our front porch assessing the steady decline of the neighborhood and chasing off the delinquents, truants, coke heads and pyromaniacs. Though a preschooler, my brother wanted to stand sentinel just like my mother. He made it his duty to handle trespassers relative to his own size, which included the paperboy’s cat. It was a rough neighborhood and that feline could have had a serious narcotics addiction for all we knew. At the very least, it liked to sleep on the hood of my dad’s car and scratch the paint.

Of course, we’re talking about a cat here. We all know that cats have no sense of boundaries and no respect for rules. This one was no different. Though it surely knew it was an unwelcome visitor, it wasn’t deterred from strolling around our yard or pissing in our sandbox.

One afternoon my brother was occupying his usual station on the porch when he spied the cat creeping through the front bushes. Springing into action, he leaped down the steps, barreled towards the cat and yelled, “Shoo!”

Startled, the animal retreated, darting back across the road. Well . . . halfway. A car came speeding up the hill just as the cat attempted its escape. Just like that, the lithe, graceful feline became a smear on the pavement.

Concerned about the effect this lesson in mortality would have on my young brother, my mother jumped up to collect him and usher him into the house. He was still frozen to his spot, staring at the bloody mess with the sick fascination that children have for suffering creatures. The cat lifted its crushed skull and twisted its neck until it could see my brother. With its last breaths it glared at him in an accusatory manner and made pathetic dying kitty noises.

Before my mother could whisk him away so the trauma of the experience would not become forever etched upon his delicate memory, my brother regarded the splattered kitty remains and scolded, “You shoulda looked both ways.”