Guilt · What I could not undo
Did you ever hurt an animal?
Date: 30 September 2026
Content note: animal death.
Yes. Three kittens.
My first wife, Nuala, and I were living in the Philippines while she researched her doctorate. On the muggy coast of Cebu, on the side of the road, beside a strip of mangroves, we found them. Their eyes were still sealed shut, ribs were poking through their skin, and their cries were so pathetic it hurt to listen to them. We spent hours looking for their mother, asking at stalls where dried fish and deep-fried banana sizzled. No one had seen her. “Sakit,” one woman told me. Sick. The mother had known before we did.
We lined a shoe box with a ragged blanket and bought milk powder. An eyedropper was harder to obtain, but after a lot of asking we got it. Feeding them was clumsy and mostly hopeless, but a few drops went in. Their crying softened. Eventually they curled into one small knot, and for a moment the squirming stopped.
That night, stroking them, I noticed what looked like white dust in their fur. Too small to pinch away.
“Tomorrow, I’ll get a flea comb,” I thought.
At four in the morning, scratching in the shoe box woke me. They wouldn’t take the milk. The white dust was moving. They were maggots. They had eaten holes in the kittens’ skin, and for every one I pulled out with my fingers, more came up from underneath. Dozens, then hundreds.
“You have to deal with it. I can’t. I’m sorry,” my wife said.
No vet. Only fish farms.
I took the box outside. I wrapped all three together in a blanket and hit it with a hammer. Blood seeped through. The blanket was still moving. I hit it again. Still moving. I splashed on lighter fluid and struck a match. The flames spread, and inside them I could see them moving.
My hands smelled of singed fur. I scrubbed them for days. A mongrel nosed into what was left and dragged something out. I tried to chase it off, but it clenched its jaws tighter and ran away.
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