Cat Food, Chicken Food, Slug
There’s a cat that appears at the back door sometimes, it has markings that make it look like a skull in reverse. It stares at me but wont come in. My own cats ignore it and if we attempt to put food outside for it, it pointedly ignores it until the slugs come – then it turns and walks away with one backward glance showing us just how disgusted it is with us.
The slugs then eat the cat food, if I am feeling hacked off at the universe I let the chickens out of their coop and watch them as they slice the slugs to shreds. They produce good eggs for the next couple of days.
But mostly I just watch the slugs, sometimes they each other, slugs do that you see. It’s quiet amazing to watch, the dark brown speckled ones are the most likely to do this and sometimes they are all bundled together in one gooey mess. They mate in a similar way.
As do snails, the other day I found a snail in one my plant pots, I was going to feed it to the chickens but it had all these little white pearly eggs attached to it by slime, it had been laying them in the soil when I came along. I felt bad, like I would be killing a family so I put it back and then I remembered that I would need the veg growing in the pot and I extracted it again.
Apologising I set it down out side the garden, it was a selfish act, not kindness, it was die out there and it’s eggs shrivel away to nothing but I killed it slant wise and not direct. I probably should have put it in a tank and cultivated it for meat. Snail can be lush.
Maybe next time.
Anyway the cat with the inverse skull, it is a bit of a mystery, you see it is not one of my cats and since the strange day when everything changed there is no longer a proper beyond the garden. It’s all just hot and bare and I think crackling with radioactivity. My dad tried to walk out beyond it all, convinced it was some stupid TV show but he never came back.
I’m not sure how we are surviving, Dad tended to stock up on things as he thought the end of the world was coming. Sometimes I think that is what has happened. But it makes no sense, it is just our house and our garden. The chickens are all girls so at some point we will stop having eggs, and there is only so much I can grow, mostly we have a cellar full of cat food. Water seems to be not a problem, at first we panicked and filled up every cup and basin and pot we could find but the taps just keep working. I don’t know if they will for ever.
It gets really boring here though and so I think one day soon I will try and follow that cat as it walks away. It may take me out there were Dad disappeared but what else is there really? I read all the books to death. Mum is ageing so I probably should stay and help her but if the water stops or she dies then I am out of here.
Oh look there it is now, the cat with strange markings, they look like an inverse skull. I shall get the cat food.
Posted: Friday, July 18th, 2014 @ 12:58 pm
Categories: Flash Fiction.
Subscribe to the comments feed if you like.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.