Northwest Highway in Dallas is not really a highway, nor does it really meander in a north-western direction. It's a six-lane road, three lanes in each direction, and there are many and frequent stoplights scattered throughout it's twisty-turny path. It's ultimately part of a larger loop—Loop 12. But the stretch of it I took each day back and forth to work was strictly an east/west kind of thing. Well maybe not "strictly." Maybe it was "more or less." Yes, that's it. It was "more or less" an east/west kind of thing. Because, as you probably got from "twisty-turny," the road had many twists. And many turns. For four years, I traveled the stretch between I-75 and 114. I had that road down to a science. I knew that if I caught stoplight X, that I'd also catch stoplight Y and Z. I knew when to take the left lane and when to take the right lane. Never ever the middle lane. The middle lane was for grannies and people who drove Saturns.

Needless to say, I spent a lot of time on Northwest Highway, and it was on this road that I witnessed—and unwillingly took part in—my first cat suicide. (Kim, you may want to stop reading here.)

We were on our way back from a Dave Matthews concert at Texas Stadium. C was in the car. So was my brother and his friend. It was late, but I was alert. We were all working on the adrenaline high from the show. I saw the cat from pretty far away. It was darting across a parking lot to our left. Fast. A black blur. I knew as soon as I saw it that if it maintained its speed, and I kept mine, our trajectories would intersect and it wouldn't turn out well for the cat. But not to worry. No way would this cat get all the way to the road. Surely it would stop or turn or something. But even on the small chance that it did continue hell-bent across three lanes and a median to my car, this road was my domain. And there was plenty of time to react. I started to slow down. The cat slowed down too. So I sped up. It sped up. Every move I made was countered. In the end, I would have completely run it over, but at the last minute I swerved right. Tires screeched. Smoke rose up. And through all the racket, we heard something else. A sickening, small thud.

Let me pause here and say I've always loved cats. I had three cats growing up—Midnight, Sunshine, and Snuggles. Snuggles and Sunshine died when I was young. But Midnight lived a long and happy kitty existence to the ripe old kitty age of twenty. I haven't had cats in my adult years because C is allergic to them. But I still consider myself something of a cat person. And when I heard that thud, I immediately felt horrible, not just for the normal reasons that one might feel horrible for something like this, but because I really liked cats. My brother, from the back seat, turned and saw the cat in the road. He said something like, "Aw man. That . . . sucks." My brother is really good at understatement. I didn't stop the car. We just continued, in a kind of stupor. I was sweating. We talked about the strangeness of the whole thing. How I had done everything I could to avoid that little kamikaze, and still wound up hitting it. I kept looking in my rear-view mirror. Like maybe I'd see the cat in the road or something, chasing me. A deep and hungry guilt set in. And it devoured my ability to think about anything else. It had been a black cat, too. Forget the "crossing your path" thing, what happened when you killed one? I figured my fate probably involved a slow painful death, demons flying around my head and shrieking, and my face melting away like in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

After dropping off my brother and his friend, C and I sat in the parking lot of our apartment complex for five minutes discussing whether or not the cat might still be alive and suffering. We finally decided we should go back and check, for our own peace of mind. So, at 2 am, we headed back west-bound on Northwest Highway. I approached the scene with fear and dread. The cat was still there, a dark spot in the road. And it wasn't moving. We pulled over. There were hardly any other cars on the road. It was humid. C got out and took a closer look. I stayed in the car because I was afraid the cat might suddenly take zombie form, leap upwards and take hold of my jugular in it's cold, zombie jaws. Luckily no such thing happened to C. Though if it had, I would have felt doubly horrible as I peeled out in a cloud of smoke. C confirmed that, yep, the cat was most assuredly dead. I think she used an old towel or blanket in our trunk to move it off to the median. My memory is kind of hazy here. If she did do that, I'm pretty damn impressed, in retrospect. Nice job, baby. Way to take charge. I do remember that somehow the cat got to the median because every day for the next week or so, I would have to drive by it on my way to and from work. When rigor mortis set in, it caused one leg to jut out stiffly from underneath the cover. Waving at me. Compounding my guilt.

There hadn't been any crushed part of the cat. No blood. C and I decided based on that, and on the way it had sounded at the moment of impact, that the cat had actually ran head-first into my left rear wheel, fatally knocking itself out.

I hadn't thought about that night in a while. Then on Tuesday, my neighbor—who I'm almost 100% sure is not a werewolf—started up his car and unwittingly ran over a cat that had fallen asleep by the rear wheel of his car. This happened right in front of our house. Literally. I hadn't seen it, though, until my neighbor's wife came over to ask me what I thought "we" should do about it. The "we" was strongly implied. "About what?" I asked. She motioned to the cat and explained what had happened. She had already called the city, but she wondered if maybe it should be moved or covered or something. I think my response was something like, "Echh." Then I told her I most definitely didn't think "we" should move it, and probably she shouldn't move it either. Just let the city come get it. Surprisingly, the city came and got the cat pretty quickly. Which I'm glad about. Because dead cats in front of your doorstep tend to be bad for showings, and we were scheduled to have one of those that evening.

What I'm now wondering is this: had the cat really been sleeping? A car starting up is a pretty loud thing. And cats are skittish creatures. Wouldn't it have moved? I think there's a silent epidemic out there. Unhappy cats who just can't bear to go on. And since they don't have opposable thumbs, and can't work triggers, they're offing themselves the only way they can—with our vehicles. Or maybe this cat was just on life number ten.

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