Darwin Alone in the Universe. M.A.C. Farrant

Fussing about the kitchen cleaning up last night’s dishes. The cat watching you, waiting and trusting. Then he got mad. After forty-five minutes of waiting he got mad and went out the window.

      Don’t bother calling him now. He’s gone off hungry again. Don’t be surprised if he finds another home. Someplace where meals occur on time.

      It’s not my job to feed the cat, it’s yours. This was our agreement. We have it in writing from Salvador & Davis, Notary Public. You do the cat, I do the garbage. You signed the document. You affixed your curlicue signature to the document, beside my neat MacLean’s script. Judith M. Davis witnessed our signatures. It’s all down on paper. You agreed to feed the cat, even going so far as mentioning your love of cats, your relief at being spared the garbage duties. Judith M. Davis smiled when you said this. Herself a lover of cats, she told us, a hater of garbage. “ Aren’t we all,” I said, and then we left for the pet store where we purchased the cat.

      Save your breath. Don’t bother hanging out the window calling the cat. He’s not coming back. He’s catching another hummingbird. He’s caught four this week, leaving their chewed heads on the front porch mat. All because. Well, what did you expect? The cat’s telling us something by leaving these iridescent green hummingbird heads. This is not a case of wanton slaughter. End of story.

      “Technically,” you said, “the heads are garbage.”

      “Technically,” I said, “you’re right—but under the circumstances.”

      “Your department,” you said.

      And four times this week you walked away from the tiny heads. Our agreement didn’t mention the cross-contamination of duties. An oversight. I realize that now.

      I buried the hummingbird heads in the garden. Alongside the remains of the rabbits, snakes, mice and finches that the cat’s resorted to killing because his breakfast hasn’t arrived on time.

      Ed English came over pushing his walker while I was burying yesterday’s hummingbird. He planted the walker alongside the graves and stared at the earth while I was burying number four. Ed English is present at most of the burials. Yesterday, he shook his head as he always does and said what he always says, namely, “I’ll be next.” An ominous, hopeless tone to his voice. The red-rimmed eyes of Ed English staring at the gravesite. He seems to think that tending the backyard graves is my job in life, that I’m a gravedigger by choice. Ed English forgets what the rows of grave markers indicate. Besides the birds, mice, snakes and hummingbirds, Ed English thinks I’m ridding the neighborhood of Old Age Pensioners. An idea, incidentally, whose time may have come.

      Because Ed English is becoming noisome. It was the same with the plants, if you recall. They, too, had become noisome.

      Because each Fall you rip the year-old geraniums out of their hanging baskets, declaring, “They look like shit,” and throw them on the compost. (There’s a cluster of survivor geraniums planted by the back fence. Thanks to me.)

      “Noisome” equals your views about children.

      “They fracture the peaceful air with their whining, bawling and screaming,” was how you put it. And slept in the spare bed for a year.

      “Fair enough,” I finally said. And had my penis seen to.

      Twenty-seven years ago.

      For which you were grateful. Admit it. You were grateful. The things I do for you.

      Ed English was over Wednesday night while you were at the Centre playing Bridge. Watching me at the kitchen table while I made the grave markers, the balsam crucifixes. While I soldered on the species type and date of kill.

      “I thought there’d be more to it, making grave markers, digging graves,” Ed English said. “It’s beginning to look like dying is no big deal.”

      Here Kitty, Kitty.

      The cat returning in hope of an evening meal. Being fed by me. Then settling himself in the middle of the finished crucifixes.

JANE AND MR. LEAKEY

      OKAY, WE WERE BORED. One night. One decade. We were sitting on the couch, staring out the window, waiting for the sunset to dazzle and we only had three and a half hours to go. So we thought about it, sort of, and decided that the remedy for our boredom could be had with the purchase of a live pet to keep in a cage like a bunny. The idea just came to us. Like a cartoon light bulb flashing over our heads. Like inspiration.

      So we thought some more, sort of, and decided the new pet couldn’t be a bunny, after all, because of the cats. “Picture this,” one of us said: “Cat claws gripping the cage wire, then cat fangs and panic when the bunny attempts to flee, thump thumping to nowhere, then a bunny heart attack, then a bunny stiff … ”

      So a ferret. We decided on a ferret. Something miserable that could hold it’s own against the cats. Could even, if need be, destroy the cats. A nasty ferret in a cage on the kitchen floor to look at and love.

      We imagined our lives with a ferret. There’d be the initial reading up on ferrets; we’d feel obliged to do that. Then the shopping for one, or searching the internet wilds for one, and then, possibly, discovering that the only way to get hold of a ferret was to trap one.

      “How do you do that?” one of us said.

      “Make a trap using common household items like coat hangers and nylon stockings and plastic bags and empty cottage cheese containers and bobby pins. You blockhead.” One of us said. One of us called the other a “blockhead.”

      “Well, you’re a blockhead, too,” the other replied.

      That stated, we proceeded, sort of. We were still seated side by side on the couch at this juncture but had stopped holding hands. Irritated, affronted, cranky blockheads place their hands elsewhere.

      “We’d have to camp out in the bush, wouldn’t we? Like a pair of demented Jane Goodalls lusting for the trap to catch a real actual live ferret and not a cougar or something.”

      “I am not a Jane Goodall,” said the male one of us. “I’m more of a Leakey figure.”

      “Leakey? All right. If you wish, we’ll be Jane Goodall and Mr. Leakey there in the blind. That’s a hiding place, you know. Blind is a hiding place.”

      “I’m aware of that. Don’t spit when you shout.”

      “Sorry. I was thinking, sort of. There’d be rain, wouldn’t there. Out in the bush. Rain … while waiting for a ferret. There’d be plenty of rain.”

      “It always rains in the bush,” Mr. Leakey sighed. “Heavy, buckets-full-of-water-hurled-in-your-face kind of rain. And mud and cold and terrible discomfort. Wind, even, and not enough kerosene for the heater. Not enough survival food like six bottles of Bordeaux, and Calzone, and artichoke dip, and balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil for the bread. “Oh to contemplate the existence of an extra virgin, a spare virgin, or an especially virginal virgin, pure, pure, pure!” (Mr. Leakey said this as an overheated aside, and then returned to the distasteful damp.) “We’d be huddled in our rain gear, in the dark, with not even a flashlight burning because the light might scare the soon-to-be-captured ferret.”

      So, we decided that we’d find our ferret at a Pet Store, somewhere clean and inside. With overhead lighting and banks of dog food, and mouse toys for cats, and a vending machine at the door taking quarters for the Vets and giving chocolate covered peppermints in return. Definitely. We’d find our ferret in a Pet Store cage amongst a litter of six-week-old ferrets looking fluffy and adorable. Like kittens or puppies. Like budgies, even. With the teenaged salesgirl gushing, “Oh, they’re really, really cute. And smart! They understand every word you say! You can train them to beg and roll over and play dead and. Did I say smart? They’re like a dog with attitude.”

      “Attitude? A pet with attitude?”

      “Yeah.