One Fourth of July, when I was a child, I was walking past my neighbors’ yard when I heard a soft but distinct sound coming from one of their garbage cans. I lifted the lid and discovered a tiny orange and white kitten inside, apparently abandoned there. I had never trusted these neighbors of mine, probably because they seemed not to trust me, or anyone else for that matter. I brought the kitten to my mother, and when I told her where I’d found it, she was shocked, and became pensive.
“Are you going to call the police?” I asked her.
“I’ll call animal services. For now, please take it outside.”
I went out with the kitten in my arms to the front porch. He was very calm, though he still seemed to be somewhat in shock. Holding him in my arms, I walked to the end of the porch and glared into my neighbor’s window. The mother, a short, plump, and very ugly woman of Indian descent with big, lifeless eyes, saw me, and a moment later she came out onto her porch. I glared at her, and just as she seemed to be on the verge of speaking, I turned around and showed her my back. I heard the sound of her going back in.
I walked down the steps of my porch and put the kitten down on the lawn. It could barely walk. In my mind’s eye, I could see the family next door looking at us out their window, and I hoped that they all felt guilty. This is how you treat animals, is what I thought, not without a tinge of vanity. And indeed, I considered my neighbors to be not only below me, but as complete monsters.
Jimmy, an older boy who lived on my street, rode by on his bike and noticed the kitten. He slowed down. “New cat?” he asked, rolling to a stop. I told him where I’d found it. “Seriously? Fucking bastards. We’re going to have to figure out a way to get back at them. What are you going to do with the cat?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we’ll keep it.”
“Well, if not, I know someone who could take it. He owns a farm up north, and he likes to adopt abandoned animals. I’m going to gather the troops. We’re going to figure out a way to get back at those bastards.”
The rest of the afternoon, my siblings and I played with the kitten on the front porch, scheming of ways to take vengeance on our neighbors. My older sister, who was never short on ideas, thought of egging their house late at night. This seemed like a good idea. When it began to get dark, Jimmy and a group of his friends rode up on their bikes, carrying loads of fireworks. “I thought we’d put on a show,” Jimmy said.
My mom came out. She addressed Jimmy. “I talked to your mother,” she said. “That farm seems like a good place to send the cat. That’s a lot of fireworks you have there. Be careful.”
“We will.”
When my mom went back into the house, Jimmy looked at me and gave me a mischievous smile.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing at a particularly large rocket-shaped firework in Jimmy’s bike basket.
“That,” said Jimmy, “is our vengeance.”
“What are you going to do?” my sister asked.
“Nothing much,” said Jimmy. “We’re just going to send this rocket here through your neighbors’ window. You know, give them a show. Of course, it will be an accident. Right, Billy?”
He turned to his friend Billy, a fat kid who always wore a Cincinnati Reds baseball cap. Billy smiled and nodded.
“How does that sound to you, Daniel?”
I looked at my little brother. He seemed amused but a little nervous. “I don’t know,” I said. “Won’t we get into trouble?”
“Not if it’s an accident,” said Jimmy.
“Well…I guess so.”
“Good. Now let’s get this sucker flying.”
Jimmy set the rocket on the porch bannister, and aimed at the kitchen window of our neighbors’ house. We gathered around it, and Jimmy lit a match. As he lowered the flame to the fuse, an impish smile on his narrow, bony face, a feeling of intense dread overcame me. I wanted to stop him, but before I found the will to act, the fuse was lit.
“Here we go!” Jimmy shouted.
BANG!
The rocket shot off, leaving behind a thick stream of blue smoke. There was a loud crash. Then, inside the house, explosions of green and yellow sparks were seen, and we heard horrified screams. All of us bolted down the porch steps and down the street, as fast as we could go. We followed Jimmy into his back yard, where we laughed and laughed. But when we were done laughing, we felt terrified. We stood in dumb fear and amazement over what we had done. Soon, we heard sirens. It was then that I remembered that I had left the kitten on the front porch. Scared that he might wander off, I ran back home, along with my siblings. Police cars and a fire truck were parked in front of my neighbors’ house, and my mother was on the sidewalk, holding the kitten in her arms, talking with an officer and looking very grave. My neighbors were also out front, talking with an officer. Several firemen came out of the house. “It’s all clear,” one of them said. My neighbors began to go back inside. The mother looked at me. It was not at all a look of derision, but rather—and to this day I don’t understand why—sympathy, and almost, pity.
My mother turned to me. “You are very lucky,” she said. “They aren’t going to press charges. Though my guess is it wasn’t your idea anyway. Where is Jimmy?”
“He went home,” my sister said.
“Well,” said my mother, “I’ll be giving his mother a call.”
“What about the kitten?” I asked.
“I suppose for now it will have to stay with us.”
The next day my mother brought the kitten to Jimmy’s mother. It was eventually taken to a farm, where it lived out the rest of its days in relative peace, though we heard it became an unapproachable, mean adult. The neighbors moved out not long after. Oftentimes I would hear the mother weeping from my window, and I felt terribly guilty. She never once looked at me again, and the rest of the family kept their distance. When my father found out what happened, he was mad at first, but very understanding. He explained to me that, where our neighbors came from, things were different, and sometimes not all life was valued equally to others. I couldn’t understand this, but I felt sympathy for my neighbors nonetheless. Jimmy was banned from our household, and in truth, I was glad of this. It didn’t seem like he truly valued life. Now, when I remember finding the little kitten—so vulnerable and so fragile—meowing in the bottom of my neighbors’ garbage can, I think about the carelessness of man, and how it is so often justified in the form of “sacrifice” or “vengeance.” And yet, all we can do is keep reaching down as deep as we can to save what is pure and worth loving, both in ourselves and in the precarious world that we live in.
