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Saturday 13 September 2014

Roadkill

I was driving home one night. It was in an area that was isolated from homes and because of that it was darker than most places. There was a good song on and I was singing along. Perhaps that is why I didn't notice when the cat jumped out in front of me. I slammed the brakes and tried to swerve. I went outside to check on the clearly wounded animal. It didn't look good. From the look of it I thought that it had died immediately from the crash, I heard the poor thing making some noises. I had trouble looking at the little cat. Not because of my weak stomach, but because of my guilt. The thought of hitting an animal and killing it with my car before was something that I would obviously avoid, but not something I feared because of emotional reasons. But as I knelt beside it my heart broke for this cat. I knew that it would not last for very much longer. It did not have any tags on it and there weren't any houses near by. I thought to myself that the kindest thing I could do for it would be to put it out of its misery. I grabbed a rock at first... what the heck am I going to do with a rock, smash it's head in? No way I could do that. I had no other way that I could end it quickly. I thought about driving away thinking that would be what most people would do in this situation. I couldn't do that either. I figured there wasn't much time left for the little guy anyway, so I sat down beside the cat and waited. As I sat beside this suffering cat I began to really think about what had happened and what was happening. I hit this cat and now it is going to die. This cat did nothing wrong. It does not deserve to die and certainly not like this. This situation, it made me think of evil in the world. I know the connection of a dying cat and evil is quite a stretch, but nonetheless, it felt evil. I began thinking of all the horrible things that happen in the world and how a lot of it just cant be explained. It is, the way it is. Life. Perhaps this cat represented the innocence of people. Their is no excuse for all the hatred that we inflict upon others. It is our innate way to sin. That is our innocence; we cannot control the fact that we screw up and will continue to. I'm not really sure what this all means. Maybe this moment was meant to be so that I would recognize the error of our ways in this world. Or perhaps the cat was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don't even like cats. 
(P.S. I didn't actually hit a cat.)