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Early Burial
Three a.m. seems to be the magic hour these days; it’s when I wake up and need to pee or just wake up to realize I’m awake, dogs are barking, or not, or hey I still have that crick in my neck from days ago at 3 a.m. when I crashed into a bedpost. I’m even in a different time zone from when that happened and it’s still 3 a.m. when I wake up.
This morning the chained up neighbor’s dogs are barking in that way they do when the free and feral canines are about. I heard a free one clamber up and off my porch like they like to do. I don’t want to get up though. I don’t want to throw my misguided superiority around. I don’t want to get the BB gun.
I’m patient but not without limits. I get up and get the BB gun, go out the side door (because in New Orleans going out your front door with something that vaguely looks like a real gun can become what would later be called bad judgement), and I hunker down looking for targets. I see a couple of dark shadows and shoot wildly, at least hitting my neighbors chain-link fence across the way. I shoot some more, scare dogs away.
This morning, at sunrise, I’m up for good (or worse) and see another dead cat over near where I was shooting at the dogs. Some blood and abrasions around the neck but not as savage as I’ve seen it before. With the vacant lot all graded and smooth there’s really nowhere to just toss a carcass, as has been my custom with all the other dead cats. I know the longer I wait the stiffer and more unpleasant the former cat’s shell will be to maneuver but I wait just the same. About 7:30, before going out for breakfast, I get a shovel, dig a shallow trench next to the former feline, and push the stiff black and white shape into it. The tail doesn’t want to fit so I dig a little under it and cover it up separately.