For weeks, I hauled Claudia, the old cat, outside for a bit of air, putting her on my lap while we sat on the front steps listening to music in the evenings, or wrapping her in a blanket placed in her cat bed on a lawn chair during the day, sometimes setting her on the ground where she seemed much happier in the grass, which made me worry that she seemed almost too content, dragging her hind legs into the overgrown ivy to find that perfect spot, and I’d think, oh no, not yet, assuring her I was making buttery white fish for dinner, then mumble stories about Greece, and how the cats came up to empty chairs at restaurants, and she’d give me a how tacky look bringing up Greece while the vet says she’ll be dead soon. I changed our routine and stuffed her in a pouch to carry on a walk, while the neighbors looked at Claudia with pity, and at me as if I was a lunatic. At home in the backyard, where the neighbor kids climbed on top of their swing set yelling hi over and over, the dog and I watched Claudia fade away. And then, without much fanfare, I placed her in the hole I had dug in the ivy earlier in the day, realizing that I have spent more years living with Claudia than I did with my own mother, and I have no idea why this realization occurs while burying my old cat, but nothing makes sense in the end.
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Diane Payne’s most recent publications include Another Chicago Magazine, Tiny Spoon, Ellipsis, Bending Genres, The New York Times, Unlikely Stories, Hot Flash Fiction, The Blue Nib, anti-heroin chic, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Oyster Review, Novus, Notre Dame Review, Obra/Artiface, Reservoir, Southern Fugitives, Spry Literary Review, Watershed Review, Superstition Review, Windmill Review, The Tishman Review, Whiskey Island Quarterly, Fourth River, Lunch Ticket, Split Lip Review, The Offing, Elke: a little journal, Punctuate, Outpost 19, The McNeese Review, The Meadow, Burnt Pine, Story South, and Five:2:One.