The Rescue
I found him as a stray kitten on the side of a rural Alabama road one winter night. Caught in the beam of my headlights, the approaching purr of my motor set him skittering into the woods. A thought hung in my mind for a moment – I should keep driving and leave the orphan to its fate – before I found myself pulling my car over onto the shoulder. I spent the following half hour directing patient entreaties and coaxing appeals into the night air. The kitten would call back in a feeble mewl, clearly terrified of me yet curious – or desperate – enough to not make his escape deeper into the forbidding trees.
After eventually cajoling him into the open with some food I propitiously had on hand, I was able to grab him in a rather sudden and less-than gentle manner. He resisted this kidnapping with tooth and nail – drawing blood so that by the time I drove to my parents’ house down the road, stray kitten in hand, they assumed I had hit him with my car. Assurances that it was only my blood, sustained from a particularly enthusiastic bite, did little to assuage their distress. “Well let’s hope it doesn’t have rabies,” was the general consensus.
After cleaning my wounds and unearthing a beat up cat carrier from the basement, I consulted my parents as to what should be done with the captive. I hadn’t yet decided for sure if I wanted to keep him, but it was clear that without immediate veterinarian care, his fate would soon be determined for me. As I was pet-sitting for a family friend that evening, it was decided that I would keep him there with me overnight and take him from there to the vet first thing in the morning.
The Sacrifice
That settled, we set off. Not even five minutes down the road, something – be it the hand of fate, divine intervention of the cat gods, or mere chance – intervened in the form of a shape hurtling across the road in front of me. With no time to slow down or stop, it was drawn under the tires of my oncoming car. Again, I found myself pulling over onto the shoulder and compelled in apprehension toward a dark spot on the road, leaving the car door open with the kitten squalling in the back seat.
The shape of a prone cat began to form as I neared, and crouching down beside the still body, I made out a collar around its neck. The sight of it, healthy and sleek in the moonlight – clearly someone’ beloved’s pet – conjured a strange feeling of sad beauty in me. There were no apparent outward signs of trauma, not a whisker or a hair on its perfect tabby coat seemingly out of place. But there was no breath either. Any lingering hope that the unfortunate creature might miraculously spring to life and dart into a nearby bush was quickly extinguished. The cat had belonged to someone and now it was dead and I had killed it.
My parents were assaulted for a second time in one night as I cried into the phone that I had murdered a beautiful, helpless cat. After tearfully clarifying that it was not the kitten I was referring to but another unlucky cat that had crossed my path, I exclaimed my wonder at the seemingly fantastic circumstances surrounding the last hour’s events. That I would save one life to only minutes later extinguish another, seemed something approaching fate. Although not typically one to lay faith in the explanatory powers of destiny, the foreshadowing and symbolism of the cat’s death seemed too meaningful, too mysterious and mystical to simply be a coincidence.
In that moment, with the hushed night sounds broken by the cries of the kitten and my own sobs, the cat lying serenely on the road as if in sleep, I felt that some inexplicable karmic powers were at work. I had taken a life in order to save a life – one must die so that another could now live. And I knew that I was now responsible for this being that I had bought with the blood of another. Come what may, he was now my responsibility for as long as he lived.
The Rebirth
The following morning, as planned, I dropped the kitten off at the vet, where he spent ten days in isolation to ensure that he did not, to everyone’s great relief, have rabies. Though free of that particular terminal affliction, he had managed to accumulate quite an impressive array of varied ailments in his short life. These included an upper respiratory infection, feline herpes, worms, and of course, fleas. Meanwhile, I had a doctor visit of my own. I was placed on a course of antibiotics to ward off any nasty infections stemming from my injuries sustained during the rescue operation.
One hefty vet bill later, and I was the proud new owner of a skinny grey tabby with a winky eye and a powerful sneeze, thanks to the lingering respiratory infection. During our first few weeks together, there was rarely a moment that he did not voice his pleasure at his newfound comfort and security in a loud purr that was simultaneously heart-melting and heart-stopping. The ferocity of his purr often sent him into choking fits, and he would not be dissuaded from this practice. This sweet little habit would take on a far more grating quality in the hours of the night as he unceasingly droned into my ear, conveying his contentedness while robbing me of sleep.
I spent days thinking up possible names for him. It needed to be profound, something that spoke to the violent circumstances in which I found him and he came to be mine. Eventually, because I couldn’t come up with anything that quite encompassed all the meaning that I wanted in a single, cat-friendly appellation, I settled on Odin. One of the more recognizable names of Norse mythology, Odin is associated with death and battle but also with healing and the giving of life. Often depicted as one-eyed, the name suited both the symbolic and the physical likeness of my winky-eyed runt (a feature which he has fortunately outgrown thanks to treatment and a much-improved diet).
The Gift
A few weeks later on Valentine’s Day, Odin and I found ourselves back in the car, he in the carrier beside me and a mountain of jumbled suitcases, bags, and boxes piled in the back. We were off on a four-day trek to Los Angeles – a cross-country move prompted by a new job and the prospect of my then-boyfriend and I moving in together. When one of those didn’t work out (hint: it was the boyfriend) the pursuit of the other and the brand new life that came with it seemed like the best way to move forward.
With no friends, no family, and no life to speak of in a city in which I did not desire to be (a feeling that did not lessen with time), I at least had a place of my own to call home. And I had Odin. Though by no means easy, he made my newfound singleness and the transition to the next stage of my life that much more bearable.
I have found joy in the sound of his ridiculous purr and in his penchant for balls of aluminum foil and bits of trash as preferable entertainment to all the cat toys I buy him. I have found beauty in the flecked yellow-green of his eyes and in the soft fur that lays just so to form intricate bands of mottled grey across his body. And often, recalling our bloody meeting on a black country road, I have found an overwhelming sense of wonder and gratitude for the fated events that brought us together.