Dominion
Cats and religion and our dominion over other living things
My story, Dominion, is in this Halloween’s Black Beacon Book of Horror. I’m proud and excited to be included. It drops Friday the 13th, though the e-book is available now on Amazon.
A profound ambivalence concerning religion sits at the center of this story, stemming from being raised in the Southern Baptist church the first ten years of my life, then abruptly leaving it. I’m glad I left, I feel little in common with the Southern Baptists. But it’s like that old quote of Julian Barnes, “I don’t believe in God, but I miss him.” A God-shaped hole remains (a paraphrase of Blaise Pascal’s writing).
The other big thematic chunk in this story is the casual cruelty shown to animals in Iowa, where I grew up. I don’t know if this is still true of the Midwest. I suspect things have improved. I hope so.
Let me tell you a story.
I was maybe nine years old, staying at my friend Matt’s house. He lived in the country, just outside the city limits. They didn’t have a working farm, but they did have a big piece of land. They raised a few animals out there: a calf or two, some chickens and roosters. I remember he had a go-cart (a rarity, the only friend of mine who had one) and a lot of room to drive it around. Matt’s house was fun.
I spent the night at his house, one night. The next day we were out exploring the land behind his house. I remember tall grass, and blue sky, and trees in the distance.
Matt pulled out a penknife and told me, “There’s a cat out here that killed all our chicks. If I find that cat I’m going to cut off it’s tail.” He said it matter-of-factly, and I knew he wasn’t bluffing, or playing at being tough. He meant business.
I didn’t mean business. At all. I wasn’t into cat hunting. I was clomping behind my friend, hoping he wouldn’t find the cat. It didn’t seem likely. Cats are hard to catch.
Still, the statement shocked me. I loved cats, and even if I didn’t, it would never have even occurred to me to hurt an animal. I don’t know if Matt was a cruel kid; I recall no other cruel things he did. He might have simply become inured to that kind of casual animal cruelty due to living out in the country, and having farm animals, and butchering some of those animals for food.
As I was still processing his statement, I saw he had his penknife out and unclasped, and was actively hunting through the tall grass. He seemed to know where the cat was going to be. I was behind him. I held no weapon.
And then: he had spotted the cat. I still didn’t think he could catch it.
Incredibly, he snuck up behind the cat without the cat noticing and whipped his arm out and all of a sudden he had the cat by the tail, holding it in one hand, his knife held in the other.
My memory serves up the image to me so clearly. His back was to me. He held a wailing cat in his left hand, lifted off the ground by the tail. He held a penknife in the the right hand, blade out, ready to cut.
I did the only thing I could.
I screamed.
I don’t know if I actually screamed words, like “stop” or “no.” It might have been a wordless cry from my gut. All I know is, I screamed, and loudly.
Everything happened at once. I screamed; the cat instantly scrambled out of Matt’s grasp and shot howling into the tall grass; Matt turned around to face me, in apparent disgust.
I didn’t care about his disgust. Relief flooded through my little kid brain. As an adult, I wonder if he was secretly relieved as well, at not having to cut the tail off a cat. Perhaps. All I remember is my own relief.
I think I told my sister, who loved cats, and who was the reason I loved cats, because I loved her. I don’t remember her reaction. Nor do I remember Matt bringing it up at school, or any other repercussions. We remained friends. Years later, after I’d moved to another Iowa town, he came out and visited for my high school graduation.
The Bible condones this behavior. “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
Still, I’m glad I declared my own dominion over that situation, and allowed that cat to go free.
Peace.
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