lolly

Lolly lived a long life. 

She was a fluffy white cat, or maybe she was one of those black and tan shorthair cats, or maybe she was an orange cat, or a gray one, I don't actually remember. It was a long time ago. She was the family cat, but mostly she was my sister’s cat, because Lolly didn’t much care for anyone else. She especially didn't care for me, because back then, in my psychopathic toddler youth, I would tug at her tail and chase her around the house and treat her like a toy, and my sister hated me for it. So Lolly spent most of her time in my sister's huge basement room off the garage. We had this massive wood projector TV down there, with a Nintendo Entertainment System hooked up to it, and Lolly would play all the video games with us. She would track the lights and bat the plumber and hunt the ducks better than we ever could. She had a lot of personality. We all thought she was very funny. My sister loved Lolly very much, and as I grew older, I came to love her too.

But one day, when I was about ten years old, something happened to Lolly.

My parents had gotten divorced a year earlier. My mom remarried a rich older man. He moved us into a massive house that was previously owned by famous baseball manager Bobby Cox, which is not a brag, just a fact. And due to my young age, my parents had split custody over me, so I would live with my mom one month and my dad the next, but my sister, being around fifteen at the time, had chosen to live with my mom, and she brought Lolly along with her. My sister and Lolly lived in the upstairs section of the house, which was like a mini house of its own, with its own living room and kitchen area and everything. And when I was living with my mom, I spent a lot of time up there, because my room was up there too.

My stepdad was a self-proclaimed venture capitalist who bred show dogs, Boxers specifically, and he kept two as pets. Their names were Max and Sassy. Sassy was a sweet dog, but Max was a violent animal. Max especially didn’t like cats, so Lolly had to be kept upstairs at all times. We erected one of those safety gates at the top of the stairwell to keep them separated. This gate protected not only Lolly but also myself, because Max didn’t like me very much either. He would often lurch at me and snap at my ankles and chase me up the stairs. I was scared shitless of this dog. It got so bad that my mom hired a dog trainer, but the trainer didn’t so much train Max as he trained me. The idea was that I was just not approaching Max correctly, that if I just adjusted my behavior with Max, then he’d stop trying to basically murder me. So a few days a week, this dog trainer would take Max and I into the backyard to train us. He would show me how to properly walk up to Max, how to appropriately react when Max lurched at me, how to give Max a treat without getting my hand ripped off, how to hug my mom without Max flying into a jealous fit of bestial rage, that sort of thing. But the training sessions didn't help. Max remained a violent animal, and I remained a frightened little boy.

So, every day when I got home from school, to avoid Max, I would quietly slip through the front door, tiptoe through the kitchen where his dog bed was, army crawl behind the big couch in the living room so that he wouldn’t notice me, and then I’d bolt up the stairs for dear life, latch the safety gate behind me, and spend the rest of the day in my room playing Final Fantasy games on my PlayStation and watching Degrassi on The N.

But one day, that all changed. I had just gotten home from school. The house was strangely quiet. My mom was asleep on the couch. Max was nowhere to be found. I walked through the house relieved and unafraid. But when I got about halfway up the stairs, I noticed something. The gate was wide open and there was a trail of mangled fur leading to my sister’s room. Her door was cracked. The carpet around the door was darker than usual, a sort of reddish brown. I walked up to the door and called out my sister’s name, but there was no reply. She wasn't home. I heard a wet, mushy sound coming from inside the room. I started to feel uneasy but pushed the door open anyway. And that’s when I saw it, clumps of bloody fur, little chunks of muscle matter, small trails of intestinal tubing, an entire cat’s anatomy strewn across the room. And there was some sort of smell, some sort of awful smell. I remember staring, dumbfounded, unable to process what I was looking at. I was only ten years old. I had always assumed that those around me were invincible, that they could never die.

That mushy, wet sound got louder. I shifted my eyes toward the source, and that’s when I saw it. Max. He was in the corner of the room. He was hunched over a mound of flesh and blood. He was chewing and slurping. I felt a mixture of fear and anger swirling in my head and stomach. I stepped back, wanting to get out of there, which caused me to bump into the door, which must have alerted Max, because that’s when he turned his box-like head toward me in what felt like slow motion. His muzzle was dripping with blood, and I swear, in that moment, he had the red eyes of a demon. He let out a vicious snarl, and then he launched himself at me.

But in that moment, something happened. The fear was gone. I stepped forward, met Max in the middle, and then I kicked him right in the fucking face. I kicked him so hard that he yelped and twirled and fell to the floor, whimpering like a pathetic fucking animal, and then I kicked him again, and again, and again, and again, and again.

I don’t know how long I was in there, but eventually my mom rushed in and restrained me. Max was still breathing, but Lolly was not. And when my sister came home, she broke down in tears and refused to go in her room, but she started treating me a lot nicer after that day. Max was taken to the vet. They treated him for severe internal bleeding. He barely survived.

But I guess the dog training worked, because Max never fucked with me again.