Life Takes Turns Without Asking for Consent

The sun is moving down, blinding her from the right side.

There is still time…

She needs to carefully move as all the beasts are still drowsing, conditioned by their late afternoon routines. There are spots of odorless, dry, high grass, over the plain, flat as the broad wings of a Bald Eagle. The many footpaths, some wider, some barely visible, define an unpredictable diagram on the field, like scars and scratches over the skin of an old warrior lioness.

She feels her load ricocheting from her chest, every step she takes; her nostrils expand to the milky smell of the fur tucked between her jaws, as she pushes aside the screen of sticky herbs. She’s split in two: half is moving forward, one step ahead of herself and the hanging cub, attached by her firm bite; the other unflinching half, is watching over the other two cubs she left behind, in the creeping thistle. Noiselessly, she lets the yellowish cub, like a moving potato, on that handy mattress and turns around. This time, she is moving with resolution; the adrenaline overspill pushes her from one unprotected offspring to the other. She’s been carefully moving her little ones to a safer place, but there is still a long way to go. Her instinct instructs her to move fast, but not too quickly.

She’s almost there, ready to transport the second one. A stray cloud diffuses the light, and her trial turns from gold to silvery. With the new load, she moves faster, pacing over her previous steps, breathing through her mouth, delighted by the aroma of her beloved.

As she slides back, a wall of barks slams her into motionlessness. She feels the ground vibrating under cold paws. Her world is swept away, like in a vortex of pain. She fletches to grab her third cub. Gigantic masses of jaws and muscles stampede towards her, at the same speed as the sun arrows blinding her eyes.

Life takes turns without asking for consent.

There is a silent countdown until that final movement that takes you to the point of no return. I think about the cat in the field, and her three kittens, as they were attacked in broad daylight by three dogs who were defending their territory.

Here is the time stamp in my mind: drawn by the unusual barks of the dogs, I find myself in the middle of the field, where an old fence hangs, supported by some wild shrubs. The cat is up on that fence, spitting and hissing, the dogs around her. I scream, I chase them away, but I see them trying to find their way back, as drawn by an easy prey. I move quicker, only to find on the dry field three scattered kittens, one barely gasping for air, and two others further away, crying, in an aimless astir.

I won’t linger on the description of how quickly I got the two little ones who were moving, how I managed to get the mother’s trust and take her back with me, how shocked I was when I did not find the third flabby kitten, as if a predator from the sky has taken it in a blink of an eye.

All I feel is the present moment: the scarlet sunset, the cat’s discreet purr as she is feeding her two kittens, my incertitude with what will come next. I look at the cat’s fur, wet from the saliva of the dogs, and I am amazed that she is in one piece. I imagine how bravely she fought to defend her kittens and how desperate she might have been when she lured them to the fence, just to take them away from the kittens, before it was too late.