May 19, 2004 02:46 PM
The Cat in the Street
Johnny's forty-something, Greek, with some kind of nervous condition, a battered leather jacket and brown-tinted 70s sunglasses. He is the guardian of our block. We've been here almost a year now, and I've barely gone a day without seeing him, half-running up our street (or down it), carrying a form guide, off to place a bet, visit his cousin, do the shopping for his mum. He always knows what's going on.
"The cops were here, you know, somebody break in over there so I come down to tell 'em about a car I seen last night, you know?" he told me last week, when I came out the front to investigate the sound of sirens. "You should make sure you lock up."
The other constant presence in our street has been a cat who was abandoned many years ago by its owners, a friendly but scruffy animal who moved from warm car bonnet to sunny patch over the course of any day, and slept on our front doormat (leaving copious amounts of winter-coat-fluff) by night. Every afternoon, Johnny would bring a plastic bowl of cat food, and if the cat didn't come immediately to consume it, he'd get agitated, pacing up and down and calling out and knocking on doors to find out if anyone had seen it. Once I saw him sweeping up broken glass in the gutter, and he told me it was because he didn't want the cat to cut its paws; another time I found him lying on his stomach on the pavement, peering down through the drainage grate. The cat had run down there, he said, to escape noisy drunks rolling out of the local pub, and he was worried that it wouldn't be able to get out again.
Two nights ago, as I lay in bed not 10 metres away, the cat was run over and killed by the street-sweeper, the loud noise and flashing lights of which scare even me. I haven't seen Johnny since, and I'm dreading the moment that I do.
Comments
Aw shit.
Posted by: Joseph