FarrFeed Classic: “The Cat With the Foaming Green Brain”

This macabre tale with a final twist is true as true can be.

Another Digital Potlatch presentation, believe it or not, the story is from the no-longer-online archives (2003) of an earlier version of this very blog at Salon.com. We’ll call the category “FarrFeed Classics.” It takes place at our old home on the Eastern Shore of Maryland sometime in the ’90s. I’ve republished it before and probably will again, whenever the zeitgeist calls for it. I won’t tell you to enjoy it, because you probably won’t, but I’ll bet you have to read it all the way through, regardless. I think you know what I mean.

A gun comes in handy when you live out in the country, but bullets don’t solve everything.

The problem showed up in our front yard in Maryland one day like the first in a series of threatening phone calls. I heard the sound before I located the beast: “Meowwrrrrr, awwrrr, meoww,” over and over, like a cat with a heavy boot jammed down on its neck. it had to be a cat, of course, but I knew it wasn’t any cat I wanted to meet. I soon spotted it under a bush: a large, dirty white tomcat without a collar, looking awfully beat-up and a little unbalanced, with something stuck to one side of its head just above the left eye.

“Here, kitty-kitty-kitty!” I coaxed rather unenthusiastically, hoping to lure it out into the light where I could see better. As I inched slowly forward toward its lair, the animal suddenly darted out in the other direction. For just a moment once clear of the bush, he froze in place and turned to look at me with maddened, frightened eyes. The thing on his head apeared to be a congealed mass of pale green bubbles, but how could this be? There was blood around the edges of the of what I now could see was a jagged wound on the top of his head where the “bubbles” emerged, and then it hit me: some things you’ve never seen before are quickly grasped when life presses in on you this way, and I knew that I was looking at a bulging, oozing, BRAIN … Suddenly the specter turned and ran, vanishing quickly into the high grass at the edge of our lot. I had probably never been so happy to see anything go away.

“What was it?” asked my wife when I walked back into the kitchen a moment later.

“Oh, just another feral cat, only it’s hurt really bad.”

“TAKE IT TO THE VET!”

As gently as I could, I explained why this effort was not only impossible but doomed. “I don’t think it’s long for this world,” I concluded. “It’ll probably just go crawl into a hole and die.”

“Ooohhhhh … ” she groaned, her face reflecting the agony of suffering creatures everywhere.

“Tell you what,” I offered. “If it shows up again and looks to be in any shape to be captured, I’ll call Animal Control. Otherwise, if it doesn’t die, I might have to shoot it … ”

“NOOO!!! — and put some food out for it, it’s probably starving.”

“I don’t think it’s going to be eating anything anytime soon, but if he shows up again, I’ll try to give him something.”

And that was that until two days later, when I spied the same cat walking along the hedgerow acting almost normally. That is to say, he appeared to be hunting or out on a stroll, and I got close enough to see that the bubbling horror was gone. A chunk of his skull missing, all right, and I could clearly see inside. That the animal was grievously, even fatally injured was beyond doubt, yet he seemed ten times better than before and quickly hopped off into the weeds when he saw me. I theorized that the exposed brain had become infected, swollen up with fluid, and then burst, relieving the pressure that had obviously driven the poor cat mad. But what would happen next, I wondered?

Twenty-four hours later I had my answer when the yowling zombie appeared again, this time on the other side of the yard beside my bronze casting studio. True to my promise, I went into the kitchen to fetch a dish of dry cat food and returned to the studio. He ran away immediately, of course, but not before I noted that the bulging mass of oozing tissue was even larger than before. Over the next few days, the cycle of swelling and release repeated itself several times. I’d left the cat food on my studio porch and noticed that some of it was gone, perhaps eaten during one of the creature’s calmer periods. By now I almost hated to walk to my studio, fearful that I’d encounter the gruesome feline oozing pus all over my tools.

Another few days passed without a sighting, and I removed the cat food, believing that my unwanted visitor had indeed at long last passed quietly away somewhere off in the woods. But then all of sudden, there he was! After a morning of productive work, I’d returned from lunch to find the hapless spawn of Satan sitting on my outside chair, much worse off than ever. This time he was too far gone to scream: the awful bubbling mass had slid down to almost cover one of his eyes, and all he could do was sit with his mouth wide open, panting and gurgling while he stared at me and refused to budge. It was time, I realized, and headed back into the house to load my rifle.

The weapon was a single-shot, bolt-action .22 Savage I’d fired less than half a dozen times in the preceding ten years. The last time I’d killed anything with it was the year before, when a disturbingly deranged rabbit had required dispatching in the backyard flower garden. I never hunted and only used the gun to euthanize. One time when the neighbor wasn’t around, I’d fired a round into a tall elm tree to chase off a flock of blackbirds, but the rifle wasn’t loud enough to spook more than a few and I’d had to resort to clapping my hands. I treated it with respect, however. A gun is a gun, and I knew it could kill.

Drawing a bead on the panting beast felt very strange. I’d never, ever, shot a pet, or anything that could vaguely be described as one, and wondered if an act so necessary could really feel so wrong. Therein lies a truth, however: a solid .22 caliber bullet is not the thing to use to kill a cat. I slowly aimed and squeezed the trigger, hitting the animal in the head, I thought, but making little difference. Instead of of dropping dead, the monster lept down from my chair and quickly ran away! There was bright red blood on the seat, as well as a smear of yellow-green that almost made me gag as I wiped things clean with a scrap of rag. I couldn’t believe the head shot hadn’t killed him. I couldn’t believe I’d shot a cat. I couldn’t believe I’d have to do the whole thing over, either, but later in the afternoon I did.

This time he was yowling, bubbly-green and bloody. Taking up position on my outdoor workbench, he dared me to finish the job. I had a pocketful of shells and shot him twice at closer range. He fell down on the concrete and crawled into a corner, and he wasn’t quiet. I couldn’t bear to look at him but shoved another shell into the chamber and held the rifle out as close as I could manage, then fired again. This time there was silence afterwards.

I wiped the blood off from my workspace and wondered what to do with the body. Out in the country, getting rid of things like mice and birds was usually a simple matter of tossing them into an adjacent field, but who knew what unholy disease would spread from what was lying at my feet. After finding a couple of empty plastic trash bags inside the studio, I eased the carcass inside one with a stick. I put that bag inside the other, rolled them up, and carried the package to the farthest back corner of our property, way back in the woods. But why have anything at all to do with such an awfulness, I asked myself?

Quietly and quickly, I wandered maybe 50 yards into old man Payne’s adjoining woods and laid the body underneath a fallen tree trunk, then covered it up with leaves. They kill deer over here, I remembered, so let them deal with crazy cat-brain karma — and so it was done. I walked back to house to wash my hands and have a drink, feeling lighter than I had in days.

Since then I’ve often wondered why he showed up in the first place, the way he did. Such singular events have got to have a meaning, don’t you think? I couldn’t keep from thinking, sometimes, that maybe he just happened to be someone I knew …

Now wouldn’t that be something, eh?

Related posts:

1. FarrFeed Classic: “The Thing on the Roof”
2. FarrFeed Classic: “Luther” (10/16/02)
3. This is Your Brain
4. Accepting
5. Green Scene: How to Live on Planet Earth