Drowning Kittens Poem by Jared Carter

It was never anything we really wanted to do.
There was always so damned many of them.
When we went out to milk, in the dark hours
of the morning, they'd swarm through the stalls,
and to keep from stepping on them my uncle
would get tripped up and like to break his neck.
They just got into everything. You remember
when Grandpa fixed up a place in that room
over the tool shed, he claimed all them cats
made such a racket up and down the stairs
he never could get a decent night's sleep.

Dad would say when it was time. All us kids -
there must have been seven or eight of us,
with some from the next cove, tagging along -
we'd stuff that week-old litter in a sack
and take it all the way to the trestle bridge
down by Hamish Henley's place, and give it
the old heave-ho. I remember Miz Henley,
with her stringy hair and her hatchet face,
she'd come out and shake her broom at us,
and we'd call back and sass, and make fun,
and all the time that sack would be bubbling,
bubbling, like Moses down among the reeds
and bulrushes, except no Egyptian princess
was ever going to come along and rescue
them poor little orphans. But back when times
was tough, you had to do some spiteful things.

After a while, with all of us standing there
on the bridge, it was like a hush might come
over everything - and then Buddy-Anne
or one of the little kids would start whining
about them poor baby kitties down in the creek,
and we'd have to take them over to the ford
to go wading, and drop a nickel in the water,
so they'd find it, and stop crying, and forget
all about them cats.

I was asking Buddy-Anne
just the other day if she had any conception
of how many litters of cats we throwed off
that bridge when we were kids? And she got
all upset. 'That never happened, ' she said.
'I don't know what cause you got to come
in here telling tales of that sort. You ought
to be ashamed.' And you know, with her heart
the way it is, and her condition and all,
I thought maybe I better drop the subject.
'You're right, ' I told her. 'Most likely
I just imagined the whole thing. Probably
weren't nothing at all like the way I said.'
'Weren't but a few, ' she said. 'I know,
because I was there. I would remember.'
'Sure you would, ' I said. That's how we left it.


First published in Plum Ruby Review.