Narrative Essay

Rebecca Harrison
1/14/2007

Granite

Nearly every neighborhood has a few stray animals; this is something that can almost be taken for granted. But can it really be taken for granted that they will always be there? Is it really to be expected that they will live, besides the circumstance? Perhaps it can be said that their being there, or even their lives, are taken for granted. A stray animal is such a small, insignificant life. Would anyone remember them if they were gone?

Granite was a kitten, and he was probably about two or three months old. He had a brother as well that we called Tigers Eye-Quartz, or TQ. They were named so because their mother, a stray born in our garage, was named Jewel. So, most of her offspring had rock related names. Granite and Quartz used to frolic and play in the backyard, but if they realized a human spotted them they would run and hide. Being born strays and all, they had little trust for humans and wouldn’t let anyone near enough to touch them. They were afraid; happy it seemed, but afraid.

In our neighborhood lived a pair of sisters, Terra and Tiffany. They were friends of my sister, Mary, at the time. They also spent many hours playing in our backyard. And they spent a good number of those hours trying to get to the stray kittens despite our continued attempts at telling them not to. The cats, being as they were, would always hide in the shadow and brush, and then escape.

One day last summer, the girls were all playing in the backyard, and I was in the house. It was pretty calm, and pretty warm. There had been no arguments yet, as there had been the days before. It was a nice day to relax. I might have been doing just that when I heard a distant voice hollering from the direction of the backyard. I groaned and reluctantly went towards the backyard intent on giving somebody a piece of my mind. When I got back there, I was surprised to find Mary was nowhere to be seen. Since she’d been told earlier that day not to leave the yard without telling, I knew who was going to be the target of my scolding.

I tromped harder and faster out toward the back gate. I was expecting them to be goofing off in the alleyway, but I wasn’t prepared for the sight I saw. Three houses down, where the other girls lived, I found them not only holding but dangling one of the stray kittens. I panicked as they ran towards me, swinging the cat back and forth. I was so upset at the improper way they were holding him that I hardly noticed how they were trying to ask me for help.

A few minutes later, they were telling me about how they’d found the kitten, Granite, lying in a strange manner over by the boat in our backyard. From there they picked it up and took it over to the girls’ house to try to get their parents to help. The parent they had asked had apparently told them it was sick and to leave it be. It was shortly after this point that I intercepted them. I’d been briefed and calmed, and was now beginning to think about the situation myself.

Suffice to say, a perfectly good afternoon was ruined by the news. Granite looked starved. His sides were thin, and you could see the outline of his ribs. His mew was quiet and short, like he could barely get the breath out. We tried to give him food and water, but he just wouldn’t take it. He couldn’t take it, he could hardly move. We moved Granite to a bench on the porch and decided to call our mom at her work.

All three girls waited expectantly on the porch for word on what to do. I was a little worried for Granite’s mental state, because I was afraid their being there was scaring him even more in his sickness. They had already dragged him around the yard and back. I sighed and told them all to come in and leave him be for now. Mom picked up the phone, and I explained his condition and the situation to her. She agreed that we should leave him alone for now, and she also agreed that there was nothing we could for him. All we could do was make him as comfortable as possible.

When the girls heard this they couldn’t have been more disappointed. They cried out and insisted that there must be something more we could do. I wasn’t willing to give up quite yet either, but I told them not to get their hopes up about it. We got an old towel to put on him as a blanket; the poor thing was freezing. Then we got a couple whipped cream bowl lids to use as shallow bowls for food and water. Once filled, we placed them near him and stepped back. He lifted his head towards the dish, and we all got a little excited as he tried to eat the food. But we despaired when we saw he couldn’t even get it into his mouth. The others attempted to feed him some more, but I figured the most we could do for him at this point was to leave him to himself.

The sisters went home, and Mary and I sat in our living room waiting. We were waiting for hope, waiting for a miracle, or waiting for his pain to at least end. That was my personal sentiment at the time. I told myself, as well as the girls, that he was in a lot of pain and that we should hope his pain ends soon. But a while later, he was still there mewing in pain. We tried to do other things, while leaving him to his peace. But the thought of him sitting alone out there was unbearable.

Suddenly, the sisters burst in and told us that he had moved. Mary and I both jumped up and headed that way, with me in front by my insistence. He had moved, but only by falling off the bench. He was turned another direction now, and the blanket had fallen off. We panicked, but I eventually decided that the shock of moving him back up would almost be worse then leaving him there. I moved the food down, fixed his blanket, and herded the girls away from him again.

It was a while still before anything else happened. Late afternoon came, and my mother returned home. She got a look at the kitten and, sadly, still agreed that there was absolutely nothing we could do. Everything from there went pretty much the same. He sat alone on the porch, suffering. And we tried to find ways to distract ourselves from the thought of it. That act of ignoring him alone was almost as painful as seeing it. For the next few hours we put it out of our mind. When we checked on him again, he was dead.

A sense of relief came over some of us; he was free of his suffering. Mary grieved for the kitten, and even though I don’t know the full extent, I could tell the other two were sad as well. Mom buried the kitten, and a short funeral was held for him. We continued on with life.

I told myself throughout that entire day that it was better this way. That he was free of his suffering, and that there was no way to cure him. But late at night, when there was more time to think then I could ever have wanted at the time, I cried for the kitten. Out came a rain of grieving tears for Granite: the fully-grown cat that would never be, the fine hunter that would never catch anything, and the father that would never teach and oversee.

Just the other day, the same sisters spotted one of a new batch of kittens frozen near our backdoor. My mother and I went back there, wrapped him in something, and dug a small grave for him near the hydrangea and fir. We had the sense not to tell Mary and get her worked up over it. But, because of what had happened to the kitten, the snow had me worried for TQ and the others. It turns out they were fine. But, I also thought of Granite.

And I hope it takes more then another nameless tragedy and grave for him, and others like him, to be remembered.

This has been some of what I've been doing while not posting. This particular assignment was made for an English class as a narrative essay. It rambles a lot and should not be the style used for the next essay.

In the future, I may direct you to other things I've been doing, such as a Gaia RP post that I particularly liked.

P.S.

Blogger's preview is screw-y, and I'm not sure if it came out alright. Please don't mind if the site rammed half the paragraphs together.