I buried the cat in a plastic Kmart bag and marked the grave with an orange road work cone. The day-glo pyramid was exactly like the other 28 cones that were scattered across the field, and I frowned as I noticed the expanse was getting rather crowded. This has got to stop, I thought. I mean, my entire backyard was filled with 'gravecones' of dead cats. It looked like a driver's ed course for my riding lawnmower and I couldn't shake the feeling that during the night some squirrel would dig up the rotting remains of Topsy or Spaz.
Sighing slightly, I walked back inside, propping the shovel against the door frame as I entered. My wife was knitting on the couch, another misshapen stocking cap for one of our grandchildren. None of us had the heart to tell her she couldn't knit anymore, so she continued to make yarn constructions whose purposes could only be guessed at, and our kids continued to throw them away. Well, except for Rick. He always found some bizarre use for them, like collecting everyone's mismatched mittens to use as golf club cozies.
"That makes twenty-nine, doesn't it George?' She didn't look up as I entered, kept on knitting as she asked.
"Yeah" I frowned, untying my workboots before I walked slowly to take my seat in the overstuffed chair across the room.
Elaine shook her head slightly, starting to speak in that gossipy tone of hers. "Well, I know that the Thompsons had only 15 yesterday, but I heard from Maggie that the Greens had close to 40 already." She held up her finished project before her, a lopsided shawl that looked like it might have been a perfect fit for the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
"Is that so?" I tried to make my voice sound interested.
"George, will you take me seriously? There's no way we can win this competition if we don't throw our all into it." She frowned at me. "Now, I've been working on a new catnip that Misty is just crazy about, and I was going to set some out this evening. I need you to set the traps." She began to fold the shawl up into quarters, and pinned a slip of paper on it that said 'Kim.' I smiled to myself. Kim was Rick's wife. "And make sure you set them right this time. We lost five cats last night because the traps weren't set."
I sighed. "Don't worry, Elaine. I'll set the traps. Right." Never mind that one of the cats that got away last night was Misty, who had gotten outside. Of course, at this stage in the game, Elaine'd probably give up Misty if it meant a win. I shook my head, wondering not for the first time if the whole deal was worth it.
"What are you shaking your head about now?"
I smirked. "Me? Oh nothing... Just that I'm probably on the Humane Society's top ten most wanted list, I've got the makings of Stephen King's 'Pet Sematary' in my back yard, and at any moment the Egyptian goddess Bast is going to come out of retirement just to strike me down for blasphemy."
"Oh you hush. You're acting like your Aunt Emma used to. Now, you agreed to this in the beginning, and you know that the Senior Center wouldn't sponsor anything that was harmful to anyone." My Aunt Emma? That was a low blow. "I'll get a full report of the standings tomorrow morning, but until then we have to assume we're at least ten cats behind. Which isn't good at all, the game ends tomorrow at noon."
Ten cats behind. And we had already killed close to thirty. But Elaine and I had never been to Europe, and when the Senior Center announced the contest, it seemed like an easy opportunity to go. First prize got a full trip for three weeks. The contest - to kill as many housecats as possible in one week. The couple with the most dead cats won. I don't know, perhaps I was getting soft. I used to hunt for sport, had killed plenty of animals in my life. But killing these cats was starting to get to me. I felt like the stereotyped bully who would pluck wings off of flies, or burn ants under a magnifying glass. Only I was doing it with cats. Restless, I got up and turned on the TV.
"George, you can't watch that thing until the traps are set. Get over here." My wife had left the room and come back already, carrying small sacks of catnip in her hands.
"Okay, okay..." I pushed myself from the chair, going outside to make sure the traps were set.
That night, I found it hard to get to sleep. I kept thinking of the cats I'd killed, of how senseless it suddenly seemed. I mean, did Spooky really care if I'd never seen the Eiffel Tower? And how did the Senior Center come up with ideas for activities like this anyway? Maybe the program director was going senile. I finally managed to drift off to sleep, however, and found my dreams pervaded by warped versions of the Meow Mix commercial, with the dancing cats getting gunned down and bombed. A delegation of the world's mice gave me a gold medal for my service to their people. We won our trip to Europe, but the flight was cancelled because the pilot's cat had been mysteriously murdered. Damn the Greens, I thought, it was probably their fault. When I awoke I was disoriented and my mind hazy, and I had the feeling that I'd never look at a catfood commercial the same way again.
The traps had caught another six cats, which I buried while Elaine walked down the neighborhood looking for last minute strays. I used the last of the cones that we had taken from the Center last Thursday, and thought that if we needed to mark any more graves we could probably use some of my wife's knitting. Bet Rick never thought of that one. When I finished with the graves, I went inside to wash my hands and the ballpene hammer that I had used to cave in the cat's skulls. There I met Elaine, who was on the phone. she was frowning and talking to someone in hurried tones. I looked at the clock. It was noon.
"...sixty-three?? You can't be serious. The judges verified it? Well, I'll be tied up and called a shoe." She turned to me. "George, the Greens won with sixty three cats!" I opened my mouth to reply but she turned immediately back into the phone. "Ah-hm. No, we didn't even break forty. Yes, a shame. No, really?" She paused for a moment, looking excited. I raised my eyebrows in a question, and she shook her head at me to wait. I decided to busy myself by washing the blood off my hammer in the other room, and waited until I heard the phone hang up and Elaine enter the kitchen.
"Well, I told you the Greens won." She sounded like she expected a response, so I nodded. "But, there is some good news."
I turned around, looking at her. I wasn't sure if I liked the tone of her voice. "What?"
She smiled. "The Senior Center is starting a new competition. And the winners get to go the Caribbean, George! The Caribbean!"
I pushed past her, drying my hands on a paper towel, and walked back outside to the backyard. She followed. "Elaine, look at this. We have thirty five dead cats in our backyard. If cats really have nine lives, that means we've committed over 300 murders. And what did we get for it?" I paused. "Nothing. And now you're going to tell me of another competition just as senseless as this one."
She fidgeted. "Well, it doesn't involve killing cats, if that's what you mean."
I looked at her flatly. "What does it involve?"
A dog howled in the distance.