Under The Wildflowers

A story I wrote for creative non-fiction class, "Animal Crossings" tells the story of my first pet, and the tragedies that came along with it.

 

From the second I saw her to the moment she died on Christmas Day, my cat Tonton was sick. We were never sure what she had or where she got it from, we just knew she saw was sick.

“Can I have a cat of my own, please, mom?” I begged my mother for a cat of my own for months. One year, when I was about eleven, we didn’t have pets in the house since we had recently moved into a new home and my mother didn’t want any pets to “mess it all up,” she would say.

Eventually, I think she missed the lack of clung fur on our clothes and two a.m. meowing so she conceded.

My mother drove us into the country-side a few days later. We pulled into a farmhouse at the top of a hill, cow pastures and corn fields enveloped the hill as the sun set beneath the distant valleys. I didn’t admire the scenery at the time, all I was worried about were some cats not some dumb sunsets.

          One of the farmhands led us to a pile of hay where a mother cat laid with her smaller kittens. The mother cat had a dark mixed coat like someone threw brown, green, and orange paints into a cup and stirred them all together. Four kittens played together next to her. One had an orange coat with white horizontal stripes on its back and dull green eyes, two other kittens looked similar to each other with matching brown stripes and soft patches of white fur all over. The last kitten, which looked exactly like its mother in appearance, was lying next to the mother cat, seemingly ignoring its siblings’ play-fighting.

“Go ahead and pick whichever ones you want,” the farmer said, his country accent occasionally dropping between syllables.  “The orange one is a boy, the rest are girls.”

My mother picked up the little orange one almost instantly, it was the first one she made eye contact with.

“Oh, he’s so cute!” She held him to close to her chest as he stared at her, frightened; her head must have looked colossal that close up.

I wasn’t sure which one to pick. The two twin kittens walked around my legs and cried, it was as if they were pleading with me:

“Take me!”

“No, take me!”

The last kitten, lying next to its mother, was practically asleep. It didn’t seem affected by the presence of us three giants.

Overwhelmed by the choices, my brain went straight to a logical, decision making process.

“. . .if he hollers let him go, eenie-meenie-minie-moe!” I picked up my winner and we returned to the car.

*

Tonton was her name. I don’t remember where I got the name from, it was probably from something I was heavily interested in at the time like a cartoon or a video game I didn’t know how to play properly.

We set the kittens down in our home for the first time. They sniffed each corner of the house thoroughly from the kitchen to the bathroom; if they were dogs they definitely could’ve had potential to be drug-sniffing police dogs. As Tippy got older, you couldn’t even open the fridge without him running to the kitchen probably thinking: “Oh, got something for me?”

As months passed, the differences between Tonton and my mother’s cat, Tippy (one of her dumb cutesy names) were growing. She was quieter; never made much noise. She slept a lot, even more than the average spoiled housecat. A whole day could go by and she would just be asleep in her pet bed. Tippy slept a lot too, but he would at least appear for meals or whenever he wanted scratched. Tonton just didn’t appear at all some days. Sometimes on quiet evenings and starry nights Tonton would appear and brush up against my leg. She’d make a small cry and I’d scratch her as my fingers felt the faint buzzing of her purr like hair clippers. Those nights were far and rare.

          My mother brushed off the isolation for a while, saying it was just her personality. “She’s not a social cat,” she told me. “She has a small appetite” was also repeated frequently.

I didn’t think much of it. I accepted that she was a quiet, anti-social cat with hardly any appetite. I played with her a few times; I rolled a little ball with a bell in it around her cat bed and she would paw it here and there, or I get out a laser pointer and she would stare at it intensely for a few minutes before she realized that it just wasn’t worth it. Moments would drift by where she gazed at me with sunken, tired eyes like she wanted something: maybe a way out.

Whenever my friend Anthony came to visit I told him: “Now don’t bother her, she doesn’t like people . . . or eating . . . or really anything that requires moving.”

He accepted it just as blindly as I did.

*

More time passed--the first winter snow had fallen in early November, and she hadn’t improved. It was then that my mother started acknowledging that something was wrong.

“She’s just sick, that’s all,” she told me. “You know how you get a cold and don’t feel like doing anything? It’s like that.”

I naively accepted that too.

The cat bed in my mom’s bedroom was Tonton’s real home. She hardly left it, if she did it was to eat a few bites of her dinner, but then she’d quickly return to it. She lounged on that bed most of the day and just stared at the floor, her eyes the same color as unripe bananas, but the green from them seemed to fade away with the snow.

I loved her regardless. She was my first cat, I had to take care of her! I printed out a childishly-made sign from Microsoft Paint and in big bold font, Comic Sans, nonetheless, it said:

“DON’T BOTHER, TONTON! SHE’S SICK!”

I taped it on the wall directly above her cat bed. My mother thought it was cute,

“I’m sure she appreciates that.”

*

          As Christmas approached and the temperatures dropped, Tonton seemed to drop with them.
“She’s shivering,” I told my mom, whose face grew more with concern each time I talked about or even mentioned Tonton. She made an appointment with a vet: “We can take her on the 26^th, that’s just a day after Christmas.” That was only a few days away, I could wait�"I waited months for her to improve so a few more days was nothing!

To help ease the pain of waiting a few more days, for both Tonton and myself, my mother went out and bought one of those pet sweaters that rich old ladies put on their dogs. This wasn’t for a fashion statement, and as cute as Tonton looked in the bright pink sweater, she still laid around with only a slight beat of her body or the brief jolt of her whiskers to indicate that she was still alive and not-so-well. 

          My mother moved Tonton and her cat bed to the bathroom for the week of Christmas as if she knew something I didn’t.

“The bathroom!? But it’s gross in there!” I protested.

“It’s just for a few days.” She said.  

Christmas Eve came and I couldn’t have been more excited to tear open the gifts and admire everything I got. Although, as excited as I was, I still laid in bed most nights and prayed for my cat to get better. Dear God, its Shawn. Please help my cat get better? Thanks!

“Time for bed,” my mom said, watching her second viewing (this week) of Home Alone, “I know you’ll wake up early.”

I resisted at first but I gave in, the earlier I went to bed the earlier I could get up, right?

I visited Tonton in the bathroom. She rested in her cat bed, barely awake, her body struggling to even breathe. I didn’t notice any of it.

“Good night, Tonton! I’ll see you in the morning! Just two more days until you can get better!” I kissed her on her furry scalp for the last time and went to bed.

*

I woke up to Tippy brushing my arm with his tail, he had grown up to be quite a fat cat. I greeted Tippy, and then sprung out of bed when I realized what day it was and what time it was!

I ran to the living room, the clock on the wall said 6:45 a.m. Keeping up with Christmas traditions, I woke up before my mother, except this time.

My mother walked down the hall from her bedroom, her eyes were red and she hardly had any excitement in her voice when she greeted me with a soft, lackluster Merry Christmas, Shawn.

I sat in the big rocking chair next to the tree and tore open the gifts. New clothes, of course. A few DVDs of movies I loved, and then more clothes. I was initially disappointed.
“Oh wait,” I paused from playing with the shredded paper, “Where’s Tonton? She shouldn’t be alone on Christmas morning!”

Before I got out of the chair, my mother gave me one last gift.

“Wait! This one is here too.” She was hesitant about me going to the bathroom.

I ripped it open. There it was: Animal Crossing: City Folk. It was the game I’d been wanting and asked for since Thanksgiving. I smiled and gasped when I saw it. It briefly kept my mind off the thought of my sickly cat.

“Yes! I’ve been wanting this for so long!” I held it in my hands like it was a rare gem, it was precious to me.

“Now I’m gonna go see Tonton.” I was stopped from getting up again.

“Wait.”

“Why?”

“Shawn. . .” She couldn’t find the words. “Tonton, uh,” she tried to look strong, if she cried I would cry, “Tonton passed last night, honey.”

“What?”

“She passed away last night. I went to check on her before I went to bed and she, uh,” again, she forced the tears back, “she was gone.”

“Can I see her?” I dropped the video game.

“Sure.”

She was wrapped up in a cocoon of blankets. Her body was stiff, cold, lifeless. I didn’t want to look at her underneath all of the blankets. I was already crying. This wasn’t right. It wasn’t over, it couldn’t be! We had so much left to do together. How could this happen now!?

We buried at her my grandmother’s house. She was buried at the base of a hill where wildflowers grew every summer. Everyone kept asking if I was okay. I never responded. Being Christmas Day, my family was getting together at my grandmother’s for dinner.

“Did you get everything you wanted?” Asked by my uncle, felt like an inappropriate question, but I answered anyway.

Once she was buried with her blankets, and the dirt was between us, I sat at her grave until dinner. I sat where the wildflowers would eventually grow. Months from now, she’d be surrounded by sunlight and flowers, living warmly in death.

Eventually, my mom came and got me from the hill.

“You’re gonna get cold up here.”

“I know.”

“She’s better now.”

“I know.”

“Don’t be sad she’s gone, be happy she lived.”

“But she lived miserably.”

“She loved you. You took care of her. I’m sure she’s watching over you--us.”

“I guess.”

Dinner came and went; I poked around my food and hardly ate. I sat and thought about Tonton mostly; how I missed her, how she had to die today of all days. Then I thought about what my mom said: Be happy she lived. I was happy she lived once the overwhelming grief loosened its grip on me. I could only think of her dying alone in a bathroom of all places.

As days passed, I got better. I woke up a few days later happy, smiling, singing a Christmas tune.

My mom was sitting in the living room, watching more Christmas movies. Tippy sat next to her, purring, begging for treats not aware of his missing sibling. I thought about where Tonton was�"how she only had a few more days to wait out before we finally might have learned what was wrong. But maybe it was just too late. Maybe she was better now under the wildflowers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

This is only my second attempt at creative-nonfiction, I'm no expert!

Reviews

[James Morris]

Wow, incredible writing ability you have there . Keep up the great work

[Salem Gray]

Thank you very much! :)

[barleygirl]

This is a well-written story, clear, with many interesting details & good use of dialogue. I was able to visualize everything all along, both sensory surroundings and inner feelings. For being a new story writer, you've done a great job. Overall, the mechanics of your writing structure are solid & mature, but there are also quite a few simple mistakes that could be corrected with a few extra read-thrus. I read my stories at least ten extra times to make sure I've scoured all the obvious mistakes.

[Salem Gray]

Thanks! I'm a terrible editor, sadly. I am trying to be better at correcting my small mistakes.