Cain

by Neda Jebelli

We brought Cat home two Thanksgivings ago, right after I got out of the hospital the first time. A childhood spent begging and whining and sneaking home worms and feeding snails and not going to parties to convince my parents to get me a pet and in the end all it took was a little mental breakdown. I could tell I got him for the same reason cancer kids get dogs and autistic kids get rabbits. I came home from the hospital and the next day my dad took me to the Humane Society. He still says “Cat picked you,” because when I walked up to that little clear box the kittens were writhing around, and one of them came over and smushed his little kitten nose against the plexiglass. It was the nicest looking one. Gray and white— stripey, kind of. A woman who hated her job got him out for me, and I tried petting him as he struggled and squealed and hissed. And then my dad held him, and he went quiet and the kitten went quiet and snuggled down so far into his arms I thought they would weld together or something. Dad maintains that “Cat picked you,” when it is clear if the kitten had been sentient enough to pick anyone, he had picked my dad who hadn’t even wanted a cat. We took it home in one of their cagey things and I realized the cat was now a metaphor for my health. Dad named him Cat but I called him Cain. Only sometimes, in my head.

My mom made Cain a weird cat pillow to sleep on, but obviously Cain never did because Cain was a cat and cats don’t really see the value in cat pillows. Instead, Cain started sleeping on their bed, below my dad’s feet. Mom said she hated that, but she didn’t. Cain wouldn’t let me pet him mostly, but sometimes during the day my dad would pick him up and put him on my bed and say “go look, Cat’s on your bed!” and try to make me feel chosen. But Cain would jump up immediately and go back to my Dad’s feet. I loved Cain, anyway, as one does, but not as my dad did. The third time I was back in the ward Dad smuggled Cain into the hospital under his big leather jacket with all the rips in it, my favorite one, and I smothered myself in soft trembly cat fur and I felt Cain’s lungs get bigger and smaller and bigger and smaller and his ribs felt so so so so thin and tiny and I cried a little. As Dad took my hands and prayed for me, even though I had narrowed my eyes and asked him not to, Cain sat still and my dad said “see, Cat is praying for you, too.” I’m pretty sure Cain was just sitting there like a cat, and not praying, because cats can’t pray, but I nodded. After that when he visited he’d always show me really blurry pictures of Cat, and give me updates of Cat, and stopped calling him “Cat” and started calling him “little boy” and I don’t think I liked that even when I said I did.

When they took me in the fourth time I was unconscious. They say it was the closest one, and they kept me in the longest, and Mom had to beg them and beg them and say my graduation was in two weeks, would they let me walk at graduation, and then beg some more. She looked really gross and desperate and embarrassing groveling like that so they finally released me, the day before graduation, but I ended up sleeping until Monday. My mom had repainted my room again, scrubbed the desk, changed the comforter and rearranged everything, but she hadn’t swapped the carpet this time. It gets expensive. If you pushed my bed aside you could see my faded vomit soaked deep—twisting with my blood and melted, spit-up pills, clinging, spiraling in Rorscach stains she hadn’t been able to wipe. When I finally woke up I went down to get some food and saw the litter box was gone. I slept a bit more.

Later, I sat at the kitchen table across from my dad. He was telling me how he found Cat but had stopped caring if I listened. He was just remembering it now, reciting, reciting, reciting as if when he had said it enough times Cat would slink out from under the table, healed. Cat didn’t, and Dad didn’t cry but he kept looking up at the ceiling and breathing really deep, which was worse. He had wrapped Cat up in blankets at the foot of their bed and Dad had prayed for him hard, hard, hard.

Apparently Cain had come upstairs to make sure I was okay. Or apparently Cain was trying to get me to stop. Or apparently Cain loved me somuch he was comforting me, trying to lick my face. Or maybe Cain had just been a normal cat and licked up wet pills off my carpet like normal cats do, or maybe I had given him some, maybe I had put some in his water before I took the rest, I don’t know if I remember that but I didn’t bother to mention it, the same way sometimes I dream that my teeth are falling out but I don’t really tell anyone, I just use more toothpaste in the morning. Dad said Cain was buried in the back garden, under the white silky plants. I wondered who had buried him or who had dug the grave, or who had finally decided to pick him up and not let my Father sit, staring, petting forever and ever—never looking at anything again, just so he wouldn’t have to tell me this story. Did he finger Cat’s little ribs, searching for a pulse, waiting for them to expand? Did he finger them with such fury and want that he pushed and pushed and pushed until one of them accidentally snapped under his desperate fingers, and did he snap the others, popping them like tick, like crunch, like pick, like snap, crying, screaming, howling so loud, louder than anything I have ever heard? I think he did that.