Summer 2023

It was seven in the morning on a Sunday. I had just woken up. Sleepy eyed and bladder about to burst, I kicked something across my bedroom floor. I looked down. Halfway under my dresser was a lifeless rabbit, one arm crudely amputated, and under my feet was a pool of blood.

It was the second time that week I’d woken up to a dead animal.

         “Aren’t you scared for him?” people asked when I started letting my cat outside.

         “Scared for who?” I asked.

         “Your cat, Prabu,” they said.

         “Oh, no. I’m scared for everyone else,” I replied.

Years before, I’d tried and failed to take Prabu outside. I went as far as purchasing one of those leashes that confused people get for their cats, but he would have none of it. He laid down and clawed at the doorframe. One time I took him outside in my arms and he nearly shredded my jugular as he ran for cover when a car drove by. He eventually found his way outside on his own through my bathroom window.

My bathroom is an oddity. It’s housed on the second floor in a dormer that is just big enough for a shower, toilet, and vanity. It has a window that faces north, looks out on the courtyard behind my quadplex, and lets in soft sunlight through the year. During the heat of summer, I leave the window open to keep the air flowing.

One morning, in the second summer after I adopted Prabu, I went into the bathroom to find that window thrown open—bits of gray fur stuck to the trim. I’d been out drinking with friends the night before; it took a moment to process that the animal on the adjacent roof was my cat. I watched as he surveyed the back patio like newly conquered territory. It was sunrise and the clouds behind him were flushed with rose. I felt like a father who just realized his kid was no longer a kid.

         “Prabu?” I called out the window.

         He looked up at me like he’d been doing something bad. Then he ran toward me, hopped inside, and acted like everything was normal even though we both knew it wasn’t.

         From then on, that window was his gateway to the world. He slipped through it at night and came back in the same way in the morning, dreary eyed and limbs heavy. I always wondered what did while he was away. He’d sleep all day and go back out again each night. This went on for a blissful year before he started bringing home artifacts.

First it was a one-winged swallow. Next was a baby rat. Both dead, one with expert incisions, the other a bit more hasty. Then it was a live rat which I managed to catch with a towel. Then it was a live rabbit, then another, and another. Prabu either wasn’t any good at killing rabbits or he just liked to toy with them.

For me, the rabbits were easy enough to catch. I had a special Tupperware for the job. They never moved. Only when the plastic box was over the top of them would they notice and half-heartedly beat at the walls before stopping. Then I’d slide the lid under them, pick them up, and take them out the front door to deposit them on the sidewalk.

Often the rabbits sat there dumbstruck, like they hadn’t expected to see the Outside again, and I had to give them a little shove. The whole time Prabu scratched hungrily at the closed door behind me, and it made me feel bad. Ashamed, maybe, like a dad who knows his kid is becoming a problem and knows that somehow, it’s his failure as a parent, too. The rabbits were cute, even they were overtaking the neighborhood, and I didn’t mind as long as he didn’t kill them.

The first thing I did after kicking that dead rabbit across the floor was shut the bathroom window for good. When I went back to the room and cleaned up the mess, Prabu came to the window and scratched at the glass. I went to the window and stared at him. Prabu looked back at me in confusion.

Look at what you’re making me do, I thought.

And I guess that’s when he became an adult, when he stopped sneaking out the window and started coming in through the front door.