On my way home from a concert the other night, I decided to walk up K Street instead of I street. K Street has fewer street lamps and fewer cars. I wanted to enjoy the crickets and the soft churr of sprinklers as I wandered home in the midnight heat.
As I strolled past a smallish apartment building, harshly lit with halogen bulbs, I came upon a strange, contorted form on the grassy parkstrip. It was a woman, more or less. She was calling softy, in a plaintive croak, for her cat, which I could see across the street, rubbing itself on the trunk of a cherry tree. The woman shot a pop-eyed glance at me and I offered to help.
I went across the street expecting to have to chase the cat, but it was perfectly happy to be scooped up into my arms and I returned, triumphantly, to the other side of the street and the strange little woman. She scuttled toward me using only her arms, holding them akimbo and pushing from one side and then the other while her legs, bent at odd angles, merely twitched out of time with her stuttering locomotion. She moved side to side and chattered for her cat. I offered to place it directly into her apartment, the door of which was open behind her.
The apartment was filthy and smelled like a parakeet's cage. The TV was on, tuned to only static. There were bottles and fast food wrappers strewn everywhere. I set the cat down and I swear it let out a sigh.
The lady asked me, as I was leaving, in a voice like someone was choking on a kazoo, to tell those people to leave and I said which people and she said that couple by the car and I looked around and saw that there was no couple anywhere nearby and I wanted to leave very much very soon.
I put the cat in her apartment and pulled the door to. I made sure she didn't want any help and I left, walking up the street as I had been before. I had walked maybe two blocks before I heard again the wailing, plaintive spasms calling for a missing cat. I stopped and waited for a long moment before turning around and going back to help again.
