It was one of those “Sliding Doors moments,” perhaps. Like maybe if Blake had left his house just a few minutes later, he wouldn’t have seen the horror. And, in a small town like his, where nothing ever happened, horrors had a strong tendency to stand out. Granted, while this particular one might not have upset another person as much as it did Blake, he was known for being more sensitive than most. Especially “for a man.” This had been a boon for him when it came to securing female friendships, but not romantic relationships. For the most part, they all harbored the not-so-secret suspicion that he must be gay and in denial about it. But no, Blake was just “built differently” from most “straight” men.

He had known this about himself from an early age, when he realized that while most of the other boys wanted to go outside and play sports, all he wanted to do was stay indoors and read. This usually done with his trusty cat, Spats, lying next to him and purring in contented bliss over having someone to press his body up against (as is often the case with humans who are desperate for some kind, any kind of physical contact). Spats was named as such because he had white fur on his front legs while the rest of him was black. Though he did have a pop of white around his nose and mouth as well. Blake found his coloring pattern to be rather unusual, even for a tuxedo cat. And when his mother, Helen, had brought him home, she said she found him in an alley after following the sound of his pained, tortured meows. As it turned out, his leg had been pinned to the pavement by a heavy garbage lid. The kind that Oscar the Grouch has on top of his head sometimes.

After Helen had rescued him from the lid, she got a good look at the poor creature, who seemed to have only recently grown out of his kitten stage. She couldn’t, in good faith, leave him there to keep fending for himself. And so, approaching him with caution, she slowly reached out a hand to see what his reaction would be. To her surprise, Spats leapt into her arms as if he’d been waiting for her to take him away from this godforsaken place all his life. So she did exactly that. And when she brought him home to Blake, it was like love at first sight. The two became thick as thieves, as it is said. To see one without the other—at least whenever Blake was at home—would have been alarming. That’s how intertwined they became.

Helen was pleased with this development. Because after Blake’s father, Ron, had died of a heart attack a year earlier, she hadn’t seen any sign of her son coming out of the shell he had retreated into so firmly. With the advent of Spats, it seemed, to her, as if Blake was starting to reemerge, even if only slightly, from behind the armor he had put up to avoid ever getting too attached to someone—or something—again. But, after a while, the joy of seeing Blake with Spats all the time gave way to concern. Because, now, it was as if he never wanted to hang around any human beings. From the outside looking in, Helen could see that Blake felt Spats was all he wanted and needed. Of course, she knew that a boy his age needed so much more. Particularly if he didn’t want to grow up to become even more emotionally stunted and experience even more difficulty with becoming a “functioning member of society.”

At the same time, Helen was wary of the notion of trying to tell Blake to stop spending so much time with Spats. That would probably only make him shut himself in his room with Spats all the more. So instead, she watched and waited. Hoping for a miracle that would undo the “Spats trance” that Blake was under. But what happened next after hoping for that miracle was something she never would have imagined or wanted. It occurred the following week. Somehow, Spats had gotten out of the house, either through an open window or door, and was found by Blake lying in the grass, almost as if just taking a nap, near their front stoop. Indeed, Blake initially refused to even entertain the idea that Spats could be lying there so peacefully because he was dead. Had, in fact, been poisoned by someone—undoubtedly the only neighbor they had who kept complaining that Spats was using his garden as a personal shitbox.

Initially, all Blake could do was stare hopefully at Spats, still expecting him to open his eyes, crawl onto Blake’s lap and start purring. But it didn’t happen. Not after he began to lightly pet him, or even after he started to roughly prod him. It was then that Blake put his face into Spats’ fur and started sobbing uncontrollably. Letting out not just the grief he had for Spats, but the grief he had never allowed himself to experience for his father.

When Helen got home from work, Blake was still there, sobbing. His face and eyes red from the strain of it. She rushed over to pick up her son and take him away from the cat’s corpse, though Blake at first kicked and screamed that he didn’t want to be separated from Spats. Helen ignored his violent emotional expressions and clutched him to her body so that he couldn’t break free, taking him into the house and sitting him down at the kitchen table. She made him a hot chocolate in the hope of calming his nerves and then went back outside to deal with the cat. That meant grabbing a shovel, digging a hole and burying the gone-too-soon creature herself. She didn’t want Blake to have to be a part of that, wanted him to do his best to always remember Spats as he was. But when Blake came out to catch her in the act, he was set off anew, crying and screaming that Spats wasn’t dead and how could she bury him alive like that?

Meanwhile, the neighbor looked on at this whole scene with a stoic expression. Old Mr. Mercer would never admit to anything, but Helen and Blake both knew perfectly well he was the only one mean and vindictive enough to do such a thing. After that day, neither of them ever engaged with Mr. Mercer in any way, shape or form again—not even so much as shred of eye contact. And after that day, Blake didn’t ever talk about Spats again, even though Helen frequently tried to get him to communicate, to share. To release at least some of his feelings more regularly, rather than suppressing them all inside so that they burst to the surface like they did on that day Spats’ body was discovered by him.

And as they did today. The day when he had this ostensible “Sliding Doors moment.” Because if he had left his house even just one minute later, he might not have had to walk by the corpse of a freshly dead cat lying on the sidewalk of one of the only “main streets” in his small town. Right there in front of a boutique shop that sold hideous furniture and hideous clothing, in equal measure. Like Spats, the cat would have seemed only to be sleeping were it not for the fact that there was no sign of his body rising and falling to indicate breathing.

Although Blake wanted to stop and examine the cat further just to be sure, the bubbling-up memory of Spats prevented him from doing so, and he kept walking. Doing his best not to stare, to see something in this cat’s face that he saw in Spats’. For, though they were entirely different breeds, there was something about the way this cat had died that felt eerily similar to how Spats did. Almost as if this cat, too, had been poisoned.

Making his way to the crosswalk, just slightly down the way from the site of the body, he told himself not to look back. Begged himself not to look back. But something couldn’t stop him from doing it. And right when he did, that’s when he saw another man passing by behind him with a trash bag. A man that could have just as easily been a civilian as an employee for some animal control service. Blake would never be sure. Never be sure if someone had been sent to collect and dispose of this animal or if this was just a random person who took it upon himself to pick this cat up by the tail and toss it into his garbage bag like the rubbish that it wasn’t. The vision of this—turning at this precise instant to see the tail grabbed and the cat dumped in the sack—made Blake sick to his stomach. To the point where he couldn’t control the vomit that burst forth from within, and out onto the pavement just as the crosswalk light turned green.

The man with the trash bag containing the cat ambled by Blake and his pile of puke as if nothing had happened. He had surely seen it all before, whoever he was. And when Blake finally collected himself, the light having once again turned red by that point, he realized that what was so upsetting about this sight wasn’t just that he was taken back to Spats’ death, but that, in both cases, each cat was disposed of almost as quickly as they had perished. As if they were worthless, meant nothing to anyone. And Blake felt that it wasn’t a far stretch to assume his own life would be treated that way when he met his end. However timely or untimely it might be. Because, ultimately, it seemed to Blake that we were all just husks that could be thrown into a trash bag when our life force was extinguished. As if nothing we did had ever been of any consequence at all.