It was from a litter that the mother had run off after birthing them and never returned. I fed them milk through an eyedropper but only the one survived. Then at a house party my parents gave, one of the guests slammed the refrigerator door on its head. It just wouldn t shut damn latches before the soft seal of today s modern refrigerators that would never lock children inside their suffocating enclosures when left down by the river s edge. One slam, two slams, who knows, maybe three slams before the kitten was noticed laying on its side on the floor, living one day, two days, maybe three days before my young mind accepted the cruel circumstances and my father relieving the kitten of its misery.
Fathers are good at that.
At the bottom of the tool box behind the passenger seat of my car lies a ball peen hammer, used for anything from loosening rusted muffler clamps to knocking chunks of ice out from the wheel wells. I pulled the hammer from the tool box, the Vise-Grips and crescent wrenches allowing the absence of its company and falling back into the steel enclosure. I had gotten the hammer long ago together with a chalk line, extension ruler, center punch, and who knows what, when I started working at the shipyards building 1,000 footers where I used to work with a guy who had a 1,000 footer anchor dropped on him. He lived just long enough to ask someone to tell his mother and father that he loved them. I was thankful that humans weren t blessed with.