Rhino Rules Contest #2: Animal Stories [Mya And The Dead Man]

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Mya and the Dead Man

I was the dead man. The doctors were convinced I had a long and slow physical and mental deterioration ahead of me, leading to the predictably miserable aforementioned demise. I got the impression they didn’t really know what was wrong with me. First it was stage IV cancer, and then it was cryptococcus. Seriously? Crypto - coccus? It's everywhere, apparently.

I declined repeated attempts to consider surgery. Odds were I wouldn’t live more than a year regardless, if their diagnoses were right. But I took the meds, even though they caused me to hallucinate*. Hallucinations don’t matter to a dead man. Not much does.

My life became a timeless place where I’d find myself here doing this and then there doing that. Even a short trip in the car caused horrible nausea so I stayed home, sitting on the deck and losing touch with the rest of humanity. And then I met the feral cat, Mya.

Mya had a husband named Freddy who lived with some humans a couple of houses down the street. Freddy would come to visit each day, sharking for whatever nibbles he could get. His humans didn’t mind, so there were always little treats and toys for him to play with.

Freddy is the one who convinced Mya to come in the first place. At first when he’d visit, she stayed far across the yard somewhat hidden by a rose bush. But after a few weeks she ventured onto the deck.

Her gray coat was splotched with every color from every cat I’ve ever seen. Her face was a pure chaos of shades, an insane mix of pattern I instantly loved. Her huge yellow-green eyes rimmed in white all around brought Cleopatra to my mind. It seemed that they saw past my soul, into a place I had long forgotten. I realized that other than Freddy, she had no one. It seemed to me then that she was thinking something similar about me.

Mya and a kitten, watching me create cat spaces in the new kitty room

Early on she started showing signs of being pregnant, so I decided Mya needed a place to call home. She came by every day and it seemed right that she should live here with me. I was sure that in time she’d transition from feral feline to happy housecat. Getting her comfortable with humans and the inside of the house was quite the job, though.

Each day I slowly worked my way closer to her, until one day I was close enough to reach out and touch her. With a few swift slices, her claws ripped the skin off my arm in five places. Blood oozed from the slashes, and I wrapped my arm in the sweaty t-shirt I’d had on my back. It hurt a bit, but it didn’t matter to a dead man. Not much did.

She moved over to the top of the steps and sat, confident I wouldn’t follow. I didn’t. I might be dead, but I ain’t stupid. Instead I softly cooed a sing-song to her.

“Myyyyyyyyy-aaaaaaaa, Mya little girl, be our little girl and we will love you, Myyyy-aaaa!”

I reached my other arm toward her and she leaned just slightly toward it, then turned and leapt down the steps. I watched her dart madly across the yard and into the shed behind our house.

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She started coming onto the deck every day once she realized we had free food. Most of the time I’d sit there, quietly singing the “Mya” song to her as she ate. Eventually, she’d stick around in the corner under a chair to clean herself after eating. Over time, I was able to just barely touch her as she’d walk by, almost out of reach.

One day she sat a bit closer to me than usual, and I just reached down and picked her up. She was back on the deck in a second, after first giving me new gashes on my arms and face. Instead of running she hid under one of the deck chairs. I kneeled and softly sang her the “Mya” song again while I wiped the blood from my face. Blood doesn’t matter much to a dead man. It didn’t matter much to Mya either. She sat and stared while I sang.

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One day Mya came to the deck before her food was out. She jumped up onto the windowsill and called out her order. I was on staff that day so I made up her plate and brought it out. When I put it down before her, she walked around it and head-bumped my ankle.

Dead men weren't supposed to have feelings, so I shook them off and sat down to watch her eat. She moved around so her back was to me. As I started to sing she gradually moved her body so that she could watch me. When she finished eating she came over, bumped me again and ran bouncing back down to the shed.

I smiled and sang the “Mya” song to myself in a whisper. Who knew dead men shed tears?

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When her kittens were born in the toolshed, Mya and Freddy would take turns guarding them. They were married as married ever was, and dedicated to the family they’d brought into the world. Freddy would sit on the peak of the roof where he could see everything, while Mya hunted and returned faithfully with whatever food she’d caught. Having kittens rekindled something feral in her, and she provided for them the same way her mother had provided for her.

It took some work and even a few more ripped arms to convince Mya that her kittens were better off inside the house. It finally devolved into a daily contest of wills, where I would bring the kittens to the house and Mya would take them, one by one, back to the toolshed. By winter she agreed they could stay in the house, and all the new kitties got a room of their own.

Eight months after meeting her, Mya became a housecat. She made her first trip to the vet, got her shots and was spayed. She learned to play with abandon, and when caught having such fun, she’d get embarrassed and pretend she was doing something else. She came when she was called and would even jump into my lap and purr. We slept together sometimes on the floor. Arguably, at the time she was my best friend. And I learned some things from her.

Dead men don’t have friends. Dead men don’t shed tears. Dead men don’t bleed or feel pain. Dead men don’t hallucinate. Dead men just don’t care.

I was the dead man, but not anymore.

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• The drug I was taking caused hallucinations in one out of one-hundred thousand people. I'm just lucky, I guess.

It's been asked, where were the other humans in my life during all this? They were here, doing what they could. And certainly I would never have survived without @trishlarimer's constant love and care. In my weakened and altered state of mind, I'd just accepted that life was over. Strange as it sounds, in that unreal bubble of a world, it really was Mya who gave me my first thread of hope that the future might not be so bad.

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Thanks for reading my story. I don't normally do this, but I'm going to ask

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