by Brooke Johnpier
My name is Cletus. I was born on June 9, 1994. I died on August 11, 2001.
Or so I thought.
I had been thrown out of a moving truck by my owners as they were sick of my shit. What shit? I don’t know. I still have no idea. What I do know though is that I’m a normal, gray American shorthair who just went day-to-day doing whatever I wanted. But clearly, I wasn’t good enough for them.
So they literally threw me out their window.
And it hurt me to the point where I hated everyone and everything.
When I was thrown out, I was still alive. And I could still move my one remaining front leg, and one back leg; the other one was splintered. To try and get attention, I started yowling. I was in immense pain, but I was yowling to try and get help. I started dragging myself across the road to get to a place for recovery when I felt the world go black. I felt excruciating pain in my shoulder, and I yowled so loud that the birds flew out of the surrounding trees.
Just as I was going to start dragging myself again, I heard a horn go off. I felt sharp pain in my neck, radiating harshly down my body in torrents. I screamed as I felt the bones in my head crunch.
I tried to move but found I couldn’t. I continued to yowl and attempted to move my body even a fraction of an inch, but my fruits were laborless; nobody was paying attention to the dying cat.
I closed my eyes and felt the wind blow through my matted fur. The soft summer breeze felt good as it cooled on the blood pooling on my stomach. It lulled me to sleep as I slowed and quieted.
“Oh my God! Daddy, look. That poor little kitty cat!”
“Yes, Jack, it’s very sad.”
“But Daddy, he’s still alive! We can save him.”
“Jack, we most certainly cannot and he’s most certainly dead.”
“No, Dad! Look the kitty cat’s moving and-“
“For God’s sake, Danny, let the boy have the poor thing!”
The last voice was a woman’s voice and had a thick European accent to it; possibly French.
I slowly opened my eyes and blinked the darkness away as a form of a young boy’s face appeared in my vision. With each passing blink the boy in front of me became clearer and I started to feel hope again. The boy began to pick me up when he touched my back a little too hard and my reflexes kicked in. I bit down on his hand, drawing blood, but instead of the boy throwing me away in disgust like I expected him to, he slowly pet my head and said,
“Shhhhhhhhh, little one. It’s okay. You’re safe now.”
If I could’ve started purring, I would’ve.
Eventually, the boy got me lifted up into his arms, where he told his parents to take me to the hospital. Both parents were perplexed at how I was still alive, and I can’t blame them; I was confused myself. But I did know that the boy holding me was the best thing to ever walk into my life.
During my recovery, the boy, Jack, stayed with me every second of every day. His parents left and went home, and brought back Jack food, trying to convince him to just leave me be, but he never wavered from my side. And for that, I decided that he was the only person in the world whom I wouldn’t attempt to kill when I got out of that hellhole.
That day came sooner than expected two months later. The nurse came in and said that I had made a full recovery. I was free to go home. The boy jumped up and clapped his hands, thanking the nurse for giving him this great news. He then used the nurse’s phone to call his parents, and asked for them to come get him and
“Hey, what’s your name?” Jack asked as he looked at me.
“Mrow.”
“Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. How about Cletus?”
I cocked my head. Cletus? My old name was Rex. Fitting with my nationality: American. But Cletus? That sounds like an old man’s name from rural Mississippi or something. However, I like the way it rolled off of Jack’s tongue. I decided that I’d take it.
“Mrow.”
“Cletus it is,” he said with the biggest smile on his face. “Please come get me and Cletus.”
He hung up and Jack held me in his arms, petting me until his parents came.
When I walked inside his house, I immediately had to go investigate, wriggling out of Jack’s grasp to do so. His mom, who I learned bore the name Clarissa, started laughing.
“Look at him go! And just to think, two months ago he was roadkill.”
She laughed her French laugh and I hissed at her, shutting her up. She looked at me with her wide, green eyes and her mouth formed the perfect “o”. Nobody’s gonna call me roadkill, bitch.
I ran off into the house, looking around and finding out that I really indeed liked this place. It was big, with many places to explore. And there were many options for me to take naps, as well. I couldn’t believe that I had to come into a home and a life like this.
After a while, Jack took me upstairs and into his room. There, he showed me where he was going to build a massive house for me, if I so chose. Turns out he built it for me anyway. Didn’t matter that I slept by his side religiously, and as he grew up and started doing adult things, I never left the top of his bedside dresser. Some of his friends that spent the night thought it was strange. They ended up leaving.
But now though, things are better. Jack’s married now, and I look over and see him with her, sleeping soundly together, and totally in love. She saved him from certain death, just as he saved me. Bridget is everything to him, and he’s everything to me. Which is why I curl in myself and close my eyes. I purr and let the sleep take over me, content and happy because my name is Cletus and I’m not dead.