Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: White (10/29/09)
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TITLE: The Empty White Baskets | Previous Challenge Entry
By Kathy Warnes
10/29/09 -
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The white cat hunched in the double-decker white plastic laundry baskets wasn’t crying out in pain. As the elderly couple, both with white hair, carried him into the waiting room of the veterinary clinic he looked around curiously. His alertness seemed to rule out deep shock or fatal injuries. The lady sitting next to me echoed my thoughts. "He doesn't seem to be in shock. What happened to him?"
The white-haired man swallowed, appearing to blink back tears before he spoke. "He was outside today. He just loves to go outside and we think that somebody in the neighborhood shot him."
His wife nodded in agreement, never taking her eyes off the white cat in the white baskets. After a few sympathetic murmurs, the other people in the waiting room returned to their respective worries about their own pets. I did the same, wondering why I had to wait so long to retrieve my own cat, Benjamin, but my mind could not sink back into comfortable self-
absorption. The tense, anxious expression on the lady's face as she watched over her cat made me realize how minor my own troubles were. Every time the white cat moved, I could track its movements by the lady's concerned grimaces and the way she pressed her lips tightly together. Her husband sat staring straight ahead, a stubbornly cheerful smile on his face.
The minutes ticking away could not distract me from the lady's face. Now her lips moved as if she were praying. Finally, the vet called the couple's name. They carried the white cat in the two white baskets between them as carefully as if it were their hearts in their hands.
A few minutes later, a vague feeling of unease jarred me out of my thoughts. I glanced at the consulting room door. The elderly woman stood there, her face crumpled in grief, all the more terrible because it was silent. Her heart shattered into pieces all over her face, but her voice didn't keep it company. I stared at her, spellbound at the agony without sobbing or screaming. The lady stumbled blindly past us.
I watched the lady stumble out to her car and slump into the passenger seat. Where was her husband? Why wasn't he out there with her, comforting her? Nobody should have to sit outside alone in a car on a bleak rainy day sobbing with a broken heart. I stared at the consulting room door. It remained closed. I wanted to rush out to the car and comfort the lady, but a deep reticence held me back. After all, the lady was a complete stranger. What right did I have to intrude on the privacy of her grief? To a degree I could put myself in her position, imagine how I would feel if the cat in the basket had been Benjamin. Still, I could not completely imagine her shock and pain at losing her pet, because mine was still alive.
Suddenly, a shriek shattered the silence of the waiting room, sounding like a scream of torment, a protest at being trapped in a prison of pain that was worse because it was not comprehensible. The rational part of me cautioned myself about being too emotional about the shriek. Perhaps the sound was amplified by my own emotions. Perhaps it wasn't even the injured cat crying out. But in my soul, I knew it was the white cat, emitting a final protest at the injustice and cruelty that have existed as long as humans and animals have co-existed.
The consulting room door opened quietly. The white-haired man walked toward us, shoulders bowed. He held the empty white baskets in front of him as if he were scooping in memories. The waiting room was so quiet that I heard people breathing and the sound of a stifled sob.
I wish in some magical way that the death shriek of that white cat could resound forever in the ears of the person who shot it. I wish the desolate faces of the elderly couple could be permanently superimposed over the life of that person. I wish that person will be forever hunted by the inhumanity of those two empty white baskets and the stifled sobs of the elderly couple.
And I know that God had a special place in heaven for the white cat and the two white-haired people who carried it in the two white baskets.
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