The sun hung lazily in the sky, and the house felt unusually quiet. I stepped out of the kitchen, holding a small silver bowl of cat food, tapping it gently with a spoon as I called out for Tiger. The clink echoed, but there was no answer. I could already tell he had slipped out again.
Clover and Daisy had eaten and were curled up together in deep sleep, but Tiger was nowhere to be found. He’s grown into this habit of taking little solo walks. Whenever he returns and I question him about where he’s been, he gives me that look that says if you don’t take walks, I do, before striding inside like he owns the place, ready to eat or sleep.
Usually, he returns the same way he leaves. Very unbothered, a little dusty, sometimes hungry if he was unable to hunt down a squirrel or lizard.
But not this time. This time, Tiger came back different.
After calling out to him and him being a no show, I left the food where he could easily find it and went to bed. Only to wake up an hour later to see Tiger curled up beside me, whining. “Hey Ti,” I said, and he looked up at me. Then I saw it. Beneath his eye, a deep, fresh cut. My chest tightened before I could even process what I was looking at.
For a moment, I just stared. I could swear it wasn’t an accident. It looked deliberate as if something sharp had been thrown at him. More like someone had decided, in a single moment, that his small, breathing body was worth hurting.
I picked him up and took him outside to examine the cut better, then I noticed his food bowl was untouched. Tiger, my Tiger, the one who never jokes with food, refused to eat.
So I put him down on the mat because he refused me holding him for long. He just lay there, curled into himself, letting out soft, broken whines. Every now and then, he would lift his paw and try to clean the wound. Watching him like that felt unbearable. I felt helpless, watching my boy in so much pain and not knowing how to take it away. So I just sat there and kept asking myself what he could have possibly done.
Did he wander too close to someone’s space? Did he try to take what’s theirs? Or was his existence in that space unbearable for the person? And then another question followed, Even if he did, did he deserve the blade that was thrown at him?
Because I have seen other people’s animals wander into my space. I have seen them knock things over, act stubborn, and act entitled the way animals sometimes do. But never, not once, has it crossed my mind to hurt them. So what kind of person looks at a defenseless animal and chooses violence? What kind of anger reaches that far?
Animals feel. I could see it in the way Tiger curled into himself, in the way he refused food, in the sounds he made as he tried to soothe his own pain. There is no language barrier when it comes to suffering, you recognize it immediately and it breaks me. Because if I knew who did this to him, I would not be able to look at them the same way again. There are lines that, once crossed, say everything about a person. And harming something that cannot defend itself, that is a line I do not understand.
Tiger is resting now although he’s quiet. I used some herbs to soothe his wound but he’s still hurting. And I am left with this ache, this anger, this sadness, this question that has nowhere to go.
How easily some people forget that even the smallest creatures carry life within them. That they feel pain. That they trust the world, even when the world has given them no reason to. To be honest that is what hurts me the most. Not just that my boy was wounded, but that someone, somewhere, chose to wound him.
