I wake up with the dawn sending purple light through the blinds. The rain is still pattering on the roof, and Kai is shifting into place beside me, her movements clumsy and uncoordinated. She's soaking wet and shivering from cold, so she presses her body against mine, seeking out my warmth.
In six months, I'm sure I'll swear at her, push her away to at least dry off before disturbing me. Now, though, I've only been back for two weeks, and her presence still feels like a sacred treasure. Even though there is mud under her fingernails, I let her put her arms around me and stroke my face, leaving a trail of grime across my cheek.
Kai falls asleep quickly, exhausted from a night of untold excitement. I lay in the not-quite darkness, listening to her breathe.
My alarm goes off then, and Kai grumbles.
"Sorry, sorry," I say, disentangling myself from her embrace and shutting it off. "Mind your eyes." I place one hand over her face as I reach towards the bedside lamp.
The light clicks on, and the room is illuminated in a wash of color, and I swear before shutting the light off again. For a moment I just sit there, stunned. My cheek is still wet. Not with mud. It's blood. Blood and flesh, staining Kai's hands and mouth. The remnants of a kill. A meal.
I close my eyes, waiting out a wave of revulsion. Then I steel myself and turn the light back on. Kai turns her face into the pillows, but not before I see the blood on her teeth. It's all over her, all over the sheets, all over my t-shirt. I look away, fighting down the urge to gag, trying not to think of Kai eating raw, living flesh.
I slide out of bed, but my foot squishes as it hits the floor, encountering something soft and yielding and very wet. I bite back a scream as I jump away, training my eyes on the safe, white ceiling. I take a deep breath, gathering my nerves, and then I look down. The carcass is torn open along its spine, and one of its legs is missing. Its fur is stained and shredded, but unmistakably white.
Coconut.
This feels more like a dream than reality. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to banish images of Kai chewing up the cat, devouring blood and muscles and tendons and fur.
I open my eyes, and the evidence is still staining my bedroom floor.
"Okay," I exhale. Get ahold of yourself. Didn't I know I was going to have to deal with something like this, sooner or later?
When I was a kid, Dad always dealt with the corpses Kai dragged home. Mom took care of the stains.
I wasn't allowed to touch any of it.
I hurry to grab a plastic bag from the laundry room. After a moment's thought, I also grab a cleaning rag, which I wrap around my hand as I scoop up the sad little body. I don't look as I knot the top, and I don't remove the rag from my hand. I hold the bag out in front of me like something radioactive, trying to figure out what to do next.
Dad would always throw the bodies on the burn pile, plastic bag and all, but even if I knew how to start a fire, I can't burn Coconut without telling Jim. He'll surely have his own ideas for what to do with her. I've seen a few small graves peppering his yard, the few times I've been over there. He'll probably want to give her a Good Christian Burial.
He won't be up for another hour, though. I consider putting Coconut in the freezer for the time being, but the thought of her exposed guts mingling with my frozen chicken nuggets makes me gag. I settle for situating her gently in the garage.
Then I take a long, hot shower, trying to scrub the very idea of blood from my skin. When I return to my bedroom to retrieve my clothes, I very carefully step around the dark puddle staining the laminate. I keep my eyes on the ceiling, not even glancing at Kai.
I grab my clothes and get out as quickly as possible. As I get dressed in the living room, I occupy my mind trying to figure out how to tell Jim that his sweetest cat has met a brutal end.
#
Jim is the only neighbor for miles in any direction, his property separated from mine by a gravel road and a short driveway. Our houses are beacons of human presence, surrounded on all sides by acres upon acres of forest.
There are six cats waiting for breakfast on Jim's porch when I walk up. They scatter as I approach, blue and brown and yellow eyes peeking out at me from behind deck chairs and beneath the steps. One of them hisses at me. I wonder if it knows what happened to Coconut.
I've scrounged up a shoebox for her remains. It seemed classier than an old grocery sack.
Jim opens the door with a smile. "Hey! Emma, right?"
"That's right." Before he can bulldoze me with his best impression of rural charm, I say, "I'm afraid I have some bad news."
His eyes go to the shoebox in my hands, and I can tell from his face that he's familiar with this particular kind of casket.
"It's Coconut," I say, trying to rip the band-aid right off. Why do I feel so guilty? It's not my fault! It's not even Kai's fault, really. It's nature. "I found her this morning. She's dead."
Jim takes the box and starts to remove the lid.
"It's pretty bad," I say quickly.
"I want to make sure it's her," he says. I try not to be offended at the implication that I might not be able to identify his only white cat. I would check, if our roles were reversed, wouldn't I?
Jim looks at the body for longer than I would be able to stomach. Then he puts the lid firmly back in place. "Poor girl," he says quietly. I look away, trying to figure out how to extricate myself from this moment. Before I can make my escape, Jim says, "Do you think I should call the police?"
"What?" My confused voice is too loud to be speaking to someone in the beginning stages of grief. I lower my volume. "Why?"
"This is the fifth one I've found brutalized like this. I've been keeping an eye out for anyone creeping around the property, but I wonder if the police might find any clues I've missed."
I squint at him. "You think a person is doing this?"
"It has to be, right? If they were wandering off into the forest, that would be one thing, but the only predator that comes near our houses is Kai."
"Yeah."
"Kai isn't eating my cats," Jim says, with a little laugh, like I'm the one living in a deranged fantasy world.
I blink at him. "So it must be, what, invisible sociopathic teenagers hiking ten miles through the woods?"
"They could have bikes," Jim says, annoyed. "I know it seems far-fetched, but Kai told me directly she wasn't a danger to the cats. I asked her when I first moved in."
Kai, you bitch. I try to think of a response to that, something that doesn't sound terrible. Should I backpedal? Throw my support behind this psycho-cat-killer theory?
"Are you telling me that she lied?"
"Well, you have to remember that she'd just lost my parents." Immediately, I know it's the wrong response. My brain is poisoned with the memory of Coconut staining my floorboards. "I mean," I say. "I might be wrong. Maybe it wasn't her."
Jim isn't listening to me anymore. He's muttering to himself now, little curses under his breath. He seemed so friendly when we first met, like nothing could possibly make him angry.
He's angry now.
"I am so sorry," I say, taking a step back.
Jim tucks Coconut's shoebox beneath his arm and slams his door as I back away. Even behind the door, I can hear him swearing.
Quietly, I turn and step off his porch.
I can feel the cats watching me all the way home.
#
I imagine that I can smell blood inside the house, so for the next few hours I sit out on the porch swing, staring at the knee-high grass consuming the yard. I have no idea if Dad's lawnmower is still running. I don't even know how to turn the lawnmower on.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I'd been planning to ask Jim for help.
Oh, well. I'll just have a yard full of long grass and ticks. No big deal. It's only Lyme disease.
I spot a twitch of a tail amongst the lawn's most ambitious blades of thin yellow grass. One of Jim's cats is stalking something. It's a brown tabby, and I watch for a moment as it puts one careful paw in front of the other, focused intently on its prey.
"Hey!" I say, standing up and stomping one foot on the porch. "Ksst! Stop it!"
The cat looks at me, unalarmed.
"Sorry," I say, sitting back down, feeling inexplicably embarrassed. The cat bounds off, back to Jim's house or the woods beyond, somewhere it can kill as many mice as it wants without me having to see it.
The sun climbs higher in the sky. It's nearly noon when Kai joins me on the porch. Her hair is wet and she's no longer bloody. She grins at me, leaning on the screen door. "Did it scare you?"
"It was gross, not scary," I reply. "You ate Coconut."
Kai grimaces. "Really? Sorry. I know you liked that one."
"I wish you'd told me that Jim didn't know you were eating them."
She makes an affronted noise. "You didn't tell him, did you?"
I don't respond.
"Em!"
"Well, I had to tell him about Coconut, didn't I?"
"No!"
"I just didn't want him to be stuck wondering about her."
"He wouldn't have even noticed she was missing!"
"She was one of his favorites," I try, but I know it's useless. Kai is right. Cats go missing all the time out here, and Jim has a zillion of them. By the time he realized she was missing, he would already have three new cats to replace her.
Kai knows she's right, and she starts to grin, all sharp and mean. "Did he ask you if he should call the police?"
"This isn't funny. He's furious. How do you apologize for something like this? You don't! You can't! We're in a feud now, and it's going to last for the rest of our lives."
Kai sobers suddenly and blinks at me with her eyes big and dark and flirty. "You're gonna stay here for the rest of your life?"
"That's not the point!"
Kai drapes herself across my lap. "You want to stay here, with me, forever and ever and--"
"Jim is going to throw eggs at my car."
Kai snorts. "No, he won't. He's not going to do anything except maybe stop 'rescuing' cats from every animal shelter in a hundred-mile radius. No more feline feast." She lets out a distant sigh, then puts her forehead on my shoulder. "I hope Heaven is like this. Just dozens upon dozens of cats, ready for the picking."
"That's demented," I say, mentally crossing off the idea of Kai apologizing personally to Jim. I can't let her ever speak to him again.
#
The summer before I left, I spent nearly every afternoon in my little truck with Kai, driving the miles of sparsely-populated back roads that passed for our town. We sang along to the radio and talked about school and the local squirrel populations, but mostly we looked around for promisingly isolated areas.
When we found one, I stopped the car and Kai reclined her seat as far as it would go. The next few hours would pass in a moment, sweat and saliva, and a feeling in my throat like it would choke me unless I managed to merge with Kai entirely.
My favorite place to go was the Presbyterian church, which was the smallest of the six churches in town. It was on a desolate street, distant from the surrounding houses, and no cars were ever parked there outside of Sunday services. I would drive around to the back, hiding us from the road. It felt safe.
It wasn't, of course.
I only remember it in flashes. Smiling down at Kai with my hair all curtained around us, blocking off the rest of the world. A knock at the window and a sudden bolt of fear that quickly hollowed out into a deeper dread. Sitting in the church office with Kai and two feet of space between us. Sitting in the living room, alone with my parents. Sobbing in bed that night. Waking up the next morning and wishing I could die, rather than getting up and facing whatever hell awaited me next.
#
Bridges don't mend themselves, so the next morning finds me, once again, on Jim's porch. Instead of a dead cat, I'm holding my laptop. I've come after breakfast, so there aren't quite so many lingering cats, just three staked out on the railing.
One of them is eating a lizard. It's dull brown with a long tail, the kind that would sometimes crawl up the screen door when I was a kid, showcasing its pale belly. I haven't seen any of those lizards since I got back.
Now I know why, I guess.
I knock on the screen door. "Jim?"
"You want something?" he asks through the mesh, like I'm some stranger.
"Can we talk?"
Jim opens the door. I expect him to invite me in, but instead he steps out onto the porch, nudging the cats out of his way to keep them from dashing inside. He crosses his arms and stares at me silently.
I brandish my laptop, turning around so he can see the screen. "I've been looking for some solutions to the, uh, problem between us," I begin, "and I think I've found a few options." I wave the mouse around my first browser tab, the brightly-colored website of the Fredericksburg Animal Shelter. "Animal Control won't be able to help since we're outside the city limits, but if we can trap the cats ourselves, we can take them in and get them fixed. There are a few rescues I've found willing to take friendly ferals, and I've been calling all my friends to see if anyone wants a cat. A lot of them are out of state, but I'm willing to make the drive if it will..."
I trail off. Jim is still just staring at me, showing no reaction. "Anyway," I press on, "I figure if we can get their number down to just a few--say, five or six?--then you could bring them inside the house at night. They'd be safe!"
No response. More staring.
"So, um, how does that sound to you?"
"I think it's a neat trick that you're trying to pin the blame for this on me."
"No," I say, shaking my head. "No, no, it isn't--Kai shouldn't have lied to you. That's on her, and I'm not trying to make excuses. I'm just trying to fix things."
"By making me get rid of my cats."
I open my mouth, floundering. "I--I mean, I just don't know what other solution there is."
"Why don't you get Kai under control? How about that?"
"She's not out of control. She's a predator, she--"
"You could lock her inside at night."
"A wild coyote?"
"You could get a kennel. Or clear out the garage. Figure something out."
My voice goes high and plaintive, losing control of the situation entirely. "Jim, I am trying to compromise."
"You're not offering me compromises."
"Oh, and you are?"
"Sure. Keep Kai inside, keep her away from my cats, and I won't reach for my shotgun the next time I see her on my property."
#
I walk home in a huff, feeling the cats' hateful eyes on me the entire way. I know it wasn't a real threat, that Jim just said it to get under my skin, to torture me a little. I know better than to take these little acts of sadism seriously.
It was the same thing before I left, on the rare occasions after everything blew up that I was allowed to leave the house. Everyone wanted me to know about their fantasies of killing Kai. It wasn't always shotguns. Once, the principal of the elementary school cornered me in the dollar store and asked what I thought would happen to Kai if someone left poisoned carrion on our property.
I'm not as easily intimidated as when I was seventeen. I'm not going to let his empty threats scare me.
One night, I wake up to an explosion marring the quiet, and I realize that his threats weren't empty at all.
I run over to Jim's house barefoot, uncaring that I'm dressed in nothing but boxers and a loose t-shirt. I keep my eyes peeled for any sign of Kai slinking through the shadows. I don't see her, but everywhere I look, I see glowing pairs of cat eyes, stalking me on my frantic flight.
I pound on the screen door, the rattling of the latch sounding ungodly loud in the shell-shocked silence following the explosion. I barely hear it, my heart pounding so hard that I feel it in my ears. "Jim, open the fucking door!" I yell when three seconds pass with no answer.
I'm about to run off, to search his yard for any sign of Kai, when the door shifts. Jim pulls back the deadbolt, and opens the door, keeping the screen between us. His voice is low and tired. "Go back to bed, Emma. I missed. She ran off."
I want to punch him, to tear at his hair and face and eyes. "How could you shoot at her?" I say, my voice hoarse, coming out half a scream. "You know her! She's your neighbor!"
"Not a very good neighbor."
"She's a person!"
"She's a coyote with a very convincing human suit," Jim says. He starts to close the door. "Go home. I won't hesitate to call the police for trespassing."
"Maybe I'll call them to report an attempted murder!" I shriek, and I sound pathetic even to myself. I know I'm not going to call the police. No one in town likes Kai enough to come to her defense, especially not with me back in the picture.
I turn around, stepping off the porch, and the cats are still watching me. One of them hisses as I get close. In a moment of maddened fury, I hiss back.
I don't go to bed. I sit on the porch swing, watching for Kai and throwing rocks at any cats that wander too close to the circle of light around my house. I spot her a couple of times, a shadow moving at the very edge of the light. It settles my heart to see her, long muzzle and pointed ears and tail brushing close to the ground.
At dawn, she comes stumbling up the porch on two legs and settles on the swing beside me. She puts her arms around my shoulders, leans her head against mine, and instantly falls asleep. She isn't bleeding anywhere that I can see, so I let myself relax. She's safe. For today, she's safe.
#
I wake up in the heat of midday, my face pressed against the back edge of the swing's chain. Kai is still leaning against me, drooling all over my t-shirt. My neck aches, and my spine cracks when I sit up straight, stretching my arms overhead.
Kai flickers her eyes open, looking around bemusedly. The corner of her mouth quirks up in a smile. "Is there a reason we're out here?"
I kiss her instead of answering, wrapping my arms around her. Slowly, she returns the embrace.
"Jim tried to shoot you last night," I say, my voice low, like if I say it too loud, he might not have missed.
"Oh," Kai sighs, her arms tightening around me. "That scared you?"
I nod into her shoulder. "I don't know what to do."
Kai makes a little noise of humor, her hand sliding up and down my back. "There's nothing to do," she says. "I'll try to remember not to go over there. If he keeps shooting at me, coyote brain will eventually learn."
"What if he hits you?"
"Then he hits me," Kai says, and her voice is calm. "Come on, Emma, you know this. I'm a coyote. Sometimes people shoot us. That's nature."
"Maybe we can kidnap the cats," I say. "Just capture them on our own and take them somewhere else. Get their numbers down until there are few enough that I can bring them inside at night, and then--"
Kai cuts me off with her coarse laugh. She pulls back, looking at me with shining eyes. "Em, do you hear yourself?"
"There must be something," I say quietly.
"Oh my dear coyote love," she says mockingly, "won't you come with me to New York? I can't think of a better place for a coyote than New York."
I wrap my arms around myself, wondering how I ended up back here, once more with Kai, once more threatened with losing her. "This is different," I say, but I'm mostly trying to convince myself.
"It is different. This time, you're not abandoning me." Kai's voice is light and teasing, and I feel a wave of guilt crash through me. Seeing my face, Kai softens. "I know you couldn't stay. You had to run, or else this place would have eaten you." She settles her chin on her shoulder once more, returning to the embrace. Her voice is soft. "I wasn't ever expecting you to come back."
Neither was I. When I left, I thought I was leaving everything I loved, forever. Even when faced with the prospect of returning, I never expected that Kai would still be here. Yet here she is, close and warm in my arms.
She stayed. She adapted. She survived. As far as I'm concerned, the fact that she's here to eat Jim's cats at all is a miracle.
And I realize: There is no way in hell I am going to let Jim shoot her.
#
I already know what I'm going to do when I get in my car. Jim is in his garden, watering hose in hand as he tends the summer vegetables. There are cats scattered across his lawn and mine, darting from cover to cover, stalking lizards and birds, laying out in the sun.
I don't know the name of the cat on the road. It's gray. Smokey, maybe, or Misty. It looks smaller than most of the others. Maybe it's a kitten. It looks friendly enough, trotting down the road like it's got its own little errands.
I press my foot down on the accelerator.
Then there's a thump that feels massive, and my heart is rocketing in my chest. I turn to look at Jim, staring at me now with his mouth slightly open.
I keep eye contact and put the car in reverse.
Inside my car, I can't hear the crunch of bones slowly being crushed beneath my tires, or the squishier noises of blood and viscera squeezing from every available orifice until the skin finally bursts from the pressure.
Jim is close enough, though. He hears it.
Sutton
February 2023