A Cat’s Search For Meaning

‘Jeffrey Dahmer was at it again this morning,’ I say.

‘I wish you wouldn’t call him that,’ says my wife. ‘He’s just obeying his nature.’

I shrug over the coffee mugs. ‘So was Jeffrey Dahmer.’

She sinks the plunger to the bottom of the French Press, trying her best not to display morbid curiosity as she gawks out of the kitchen window. ‘What is it, a bird or a mouse?’

‘I can’t tell,’ I say. ‘He’s a total deconstructionist is that cat. Maybe Derrida would be a better name for him.’

Judging by the remnant of quill glistening in the mess of innards on the flagstones, I’d guess it was once a starling, but that furry psychopath has transformed it into a work of transgressive art. I’ve never seen such an absolute mockery of form: a shattered beak, puréed guts, blue-yellow cartilage, pink viscera congealing in a Picasso pool of abstract expressionism.

‘Maybe it’s an attempt at understanding,’ I posit, as we sip our coffee on the bench and watch Milo, luxuriating on a mattress of leaves on the lawn, licking his own arsehole as though it were coated in cream. ‘None of it has been eaten.’

‘They rarely eat the gifts they leave for their owners. It’s just their way of proving their worth.’

‘But he’s never taken one apart so thoroughly before.’ I stare into our pet’s eyes, the black slits of the pupils as thin as millipedes trapped in honey. He glowers back, and for a moment, I am the bird in its final twittering of terror as death bares its fangs. A shiver worms up my spine.

‘It’s just nature,’ says my wife, the farmer’s daughter, birdsong on the breeze, blood on the grass, as the killer slinks into the bushes in search of fresh meaning.