Cats
A short story
“Mommy and Daddy, Squiggles is dead.” Seven-year-old Lucy Albright appeared at the foot of her parents' bed. A cascading stream of tears spilled down her cheeks and onto the floor. Her words barely audible, she whispered, “He’s dead.”
Jonathan and Violet swiftly rose, their blanket tumbling to the floor, approached Lucy, and crouched beside her. The clock above the door glowed, 3:33 a.m. The low rumble of the ship’s engines amplified Lucy’s sobs.
“Let’s go see Squiggles. Is she in your room?” her father asked.
Lucy nodded. She parted her lips, but no words emerged.
Jonathan pressed the exit button, and their bedroom door silently glided open. He paused at the panel on the wall outside their bedroom and tapped the touch-sensitive screen. “I’ll set gravity back to ninety percent. Hold on to a gravity handle for support.”
At night, when they slept, they reduced the artificial gravity to fifty percent to save energy.
They each gripped a handle attached to the wall in the hallway while their legs wobbled and the ship’s gravity returned to its daytime level.
Squiggles the cat lay in her bed beside Lucy’s bed. Not breathing, eyes clouded and unfocused—she was clearly gone.
Jonathan and Violet knelt beside Squiggles to be sure. In space, illusions were not uncommon.
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Violet said. She hugged Lucy tightly. After several minutes, when Lucy’s crying subsided, Violet released her and asked, “What happened? How did you know she was dead in the middle of the night?”
“I felt a paw tap my shoulder while I was sleeping. But it wasn’t Squiggles’ paw.”
Her parents scrunched their faces. “What do you mean, sweetie?”
“Squiggles pats lightly and twice when she wants to wake me. Sometimes she licks my face. This felt like four or five taps and harder.”
“Like she was asking you for help?”
Lucy shook her head. “No. I woke up right away and saw she wasn’t breathing, so she couldn’t have.”
“It must have been a dream,” her father reassured. “I’m very sorry.
“I miss Squiggles already.”
“Maybe we can get you another cat when we reach Sabuin Seven,” her father said.
Sabuin Seven, an Earth-like planet orbiting binary stars nine-point-seven light years from Earth, was the Albright family’s destination. In three weeks, when their trajectory to Mars locked in, the ship’s engines would catapult them to near-light speed, and they’d enter stasis for the twelve-year journey. The Wavertree was one of 2,500 space vessels—some small, some large—that would save 100,000 humans from the planet-killing asteroid destined to impact Earth on October 1, 2057. Today was September 12, 2057. The Wavertree was one of the last ships to escape.
“If another family brought cats, they might have babies, and you can adopt one.” Jonathan didn’t know if that was true, but he didn’t know how else to console his daughter.
Lucy wept again. She shook her head and sputtered, “I want Squiggles.”
Her mom held her. “I know. I know.”
“We’ll have a funeral for Squiggles tomorrow,” her father said.
A new fountain of tears poured from Lucy’s eyes. “I want the funeral now.” She took hold of her mother’s hand and squeezed it. “Please.”
“Okay,” her mother said.
“Yes,” Jonathan agreed. “We’ll have the funeral right away, but after that, we have to send Squiggles' body into space. We can’t take her with us.”
“I understand. It’s okay.” She paused for a moment and then asked, “Squiggles will be in space forever? Here in this spot, frozen and the same way for the rest of time?”
Jonathan wiped the corner of his eyes with the back of his hand. “Yes, forever.”
“I understand. We can have the funeral now.”
Jonathan wrapped Squiggles’ small body in a white pillow case, knotting the fabric tightly at both ends so it would remain that way for hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions of years.
They had no formal clothes, but Jonathan gave everyone a pillowcase to wear over their shoulders like a shawl, what Squiggles would wear forever. He placed four empty cups on the mess room table, to signify that their hearts would be empty now that Squiggles was gone. Lucy said “The Owl and the Kitty” was Squiggles’ favorite song, so they played that over the speaker.
Lucy drew a picture of Squiggles, which her father folded and slipped into the pillowcase that contained the tabby cat’s body.
After the ten-minute ceremony, he dispatched Squiggles through the airlock.
Lucy’s parents hugged and kissed her again, and then Lucy said, “I’m not hungry. Can I go to my room?”
“Of course you can, sweetie,” Lucy’s mom replied.
About an hour later, Lucy entered the small mess room, where her parents were still eating. Her eyes were dry.
“What is it, sweetie?” her mom asked. “Are you hungry now?”
Lucy stood motionless for a minute and finally said, “Look out the window.”
Jonathan and Lucy turned to the starboard porthole.
Two cats floated several meters from the ship, but their bodies weren’t corporeal. Squiggles wasn’t ensconced in his shroud, either. Pulsing stars, distant planets encircled by kaleidoscopic rings, brilliant nebulae, and comets shone through these two cats' transparent bodies. As they floated outside the ship, the cats pawed and played with each other, first chasing what looked like a falling meteor made of multi-colored gems, then mischievously wrestling as cats do, spinning freely in the zero-gravity of deep space, their gossamer tails flicking from side to side.
Nobody moved until Lucy said, “That’s Squiggles’ ghost. But who’s that other cat?”
“Ghost?” Violet asked, squinting at the porthole. She looked past the apparitions, peering methodically and deeper into the universe, to the left and right and up and down, in part to see if there was something else beyond her comprehension, or give herself time to process what her eyes revealed, or for both reasons. Finally, she gasped. “Yes, that’s Squiggles’ spirit.”
“The other cat is Piroshki, the first cat in space, sent into orbit in nineteen-sixty-three. A five-year-old Russian Blue. I recognize it from the pictures. His capsule never returned to Earth, and Piroshki died in space,” her father added.
Lucy pressed her nose against the glass until it fogged. The glass squeaked as she wiped the condensation off with her shirt sleeve. She raised her hand and waved to Squiggles, who waved a paw back to her. She mouthed, “Bye.”
Lucy turned to her parents and said, “Piroshki’s been alone for a long time. Now he has a friend.”
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If you liked this story, I think you’ll also enjoy The Day Oliver’s Father Died.
The Day Oliver's Father Died
At 11:35 p.m., thirteen-year-old Oliver Peat turned the knob of his Lafayette HA-230 shortwave radio, swiveling his desk chair from side to side. He sat in total darkness, except for the soft, yellow glow of the radio’s dial. He had been listening to a variety show from Radio Netherland, and before that, a news broadcast from Mosc…
When my old cat died, he came to me gave me a soft meow. When I looked down it was as though he was asleep, but I noticed he wasn't breathing. My wife came into the room when I was telling him goodbye. She suggested he be buried under the azalea bush because that is where he liked to sleep outside. I really can't imagine him floating in space.
That is very sweet, Jim. Reminded me of my Margot... gone too soon.