Coronavirus Tale with a (Sort of) Happy Ending
CHUCK ETHERIDGE
May 29, 2020
She called in tears
Eighty year old voice
Quavering
Like a frightened chick
“I’m in a wheelchair
Now
I can’t care for him
I have to put him down”
“He,”
Her much-loved cat
Thirteen years old
Softer than down
Her only companion
In isolation made worse
By a pandemic
That made isolation a virtue
I cannot fix her body
Cruelly wracked by age
Nor can I even go see her
To offer company and comfort
But maybe
Just maybe
I can help
Save the cat.
“Give me two days,”
I say.
Her voice perks up,
Hope-filled that her companion might live.
I turn to the modern town crier
And pen a plea
To free a condemned cat
Kind hearted people
From Texas to Louisiana
Repost
Extend the plea
Within an hour
A friend
Six blocks away
Says
“We lost our cat
We can take him
The kids are excited.”And just like that
A feline is freed
From death row
It takes a logistical
Day
To navigate
Coronavirusland
Getting things
From her apartment
Getting the cat
From the vet
Delivering him
Safely
Exchanges without
Human contact
God knows
What the cat thought
Of all of this.
But he is “rehomed”
He is safe
He is free
It’s a happy ending
Mostly
But my friend
Is now completely alone.
A self-proclaimed desert rat, CHUCK ETHERIDGE was raised in El Paso, Texas. After a stint in the US Navy keeping the coast of Southern California safe from the threat of enemy invasion, he attended the University of Texas at El Paso and TCU. In addition to his time in the service, he has worked as an actor, a convenience store clerk, a Rent-a-Poet, and a catalog copy writer (specialty: describing staplers) before finding respectable employment as a Professor of English at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and free-lance writer. He is the author of two novels, Border Canto and The Desert after Rain, his poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction have been published in a variety of reviews and anthologized in a number of books, and he has written two plays that have been produced. His most recent work can be found in the Corpus Christi Writers Anthologies and Trek-a-Tanka.
