seaside recuperative

Short story, standalone. Sad and funny. 

Mimette turned her face away in protest, one paw feebly coming up to push the plastic away from her mouth. She swallowed, but she didn't look happy at all.

Candice stroked the cat's head and gently withdrew the syringe full of hydrating solution. "Girlie, you have to drink." Her fingers pressed down the soft fur, gliding over the plush texture. She tried not to notice how thin the bones underneath it were. "You can't just waste away, even though it's honestly really on brand for you in terms of dramatics."

'The vet is open tomorrow. We just have to wait until tomorrow, baby.'

It was halfway to a prayer. She felt miserable to see the cat clearly suffering. She'd been there when Mimette was born. She'd been there nearly every day of the cat's life. This couldn't be happening. It had to be okay.

Mimette seemed to relax into the petting, eyes closing. She was barely any weight on Candice's lap, hardly heavier than the blue blanket she was wrapped in. Mimette gave a soft chirrup. Candice felt hope unfurl in her chest. She'd been slowly giving the cat water and soft food since the morning. Maybe Mimette was feeling better.

The café door chimed.

Candice looked up and put a smile on her face. Her sister came out and clicked her heels on the sidewalk, a step in front of her student for the hour.

"Oh, here's the baby," said a woman that Candice didn't really know. A nurse or a doctor, someone with money to spend on learning a second language. She flashed a smile that Candice returned. The student knelt and let a hand hover over the cat silently asking for permission.

"Go ahead," Candice said, nodding her head. Her smile felt brittle.

"Oh, so soft." The student gave Mimette one long stroke. Mimette opened her eyes a crack and then closed them immediately. "I hope you feel better soon, kitty cat." She gave a scratch to Mimette's velvety soft ear and then stood back up. "I'll see you next week!"

"Goodbye!" Diana crinkled her eyes and flashed her teeth in a smile. She waved. "See you then!"

If Candice didn't know better, she never would have guessed that Diana had had dental surgery in the morning. It had to hurt like a bitch now that the local had worn off.

Candice sighed and stopped paying attention to her sister in customer service mode. She ran her hands under the cat's side. She needed to pick her up and put Mimette back into the kennel, but she was putting it off.

The smile fell off and Diana just looked tired. She knelt beside them. "How was she?" Her voice was dull.

She paused for a moment without breathing. "She's not dead," Candice said dryly. Not yet. "I don't know, maybe she's getting better." She wanted to believe that. "For a while she was really responsive. She moved on her own to curl up here."

She didn't say that she'd had to help. The cat's legs had been so weak that she couldn't stand. The sight had just hurt. Mimette had maneuvered her back feet to the ground, but hadn't been able to push up. She'd pushed herself across the blanket until Candice helped, nosing forward to Candice's legs. She looked like a newborn with her eyes pressed closed.

"Maybe she'll be fine." Diana sounded hopeful and resigned all together. Her jaw worked, a muscle moving under her cheek muscles. "We had better get going. Half an hour off."

"Yeah."  Candice put the cat in the kennel. She wanted Mimette to open her eyes. Mimette didn't. "Let's go towards home."

They got on the next train and took Mimette 6 stops before they had to get ready for the next appointment. Candice kept the kennel on her lap, hugging it in a poor substitute for her sweet little baby. They weren't home yet, but they got off. They didn't talk as they came to a bench under a streetlight.

"We brought her to the seaside," Diana said, a laugh in her voice.

"Like some convalescent victorian waif," Candice agreed. She patted the kennel lovingly and peerrd through the holes. Mimette laid there in a sweet little curled up position. She flicked an ear at the voice. "Darling, will the sea air rejuvenate you?"

"Here's hoping."

The sun was just starting to set. Candice put the kennel on sand in front of the bench and then unpacked her laptop. She stole a glance at her watch to see that she had ten minutes until her client was due. She opened up all the programs that she would need and then got down in the sand to spend her free time with the cat. Diana was already sprawled out with Miette on her lap. Candice itched to help, but she just watched Diana coax the cat's mouth open and insert the tip of the syringe.

"You have to drink," Diana said, in a sing-song voice that she used with all her child students.

Candice reached out for the dozenth time to pinch the fur on Mimette's back. It tented, and didn't rebound into position. Still dehydrated.

She had heaviness in her chest. She hated this. She felt sick and guilty. She wondered how long Mimette had been avoiding food and drink. They didn't usually hover over the cats as they ate. They didn't know anything was wrong until Mimette got thin and Marshmallow got fat. It had seemed obvious that Marshmallow was being a bully and stealing the smaller car's food. They'd tried solving it by feeding Mimette separately. That had only proved that Mimette was refusing to eat or drink.

Diana kept cooing. "Darling little dove, sweetie-"

Diana full-body flinched as the cat coughed, protesting the drink.

"Oh, shit," Candice found herself saying. She hovered helplessly. The cat was convulsing. "Oh no, baby girl."

Mimette was only 6 years old. She was way too young to waste away like this. It didn't make sense. They didn't even know what was wrong. Was it the cold that had gone around the house? They'd taken Marshmallow to the vet and been told he'd be fine. When Mimette showed the same symptoms a couple days later, they hadn't taken her to the vet. The $120 they'd spent being told that Marshmallow was fine had come out of the grocery budget.

'I wish we'd taken her in anyway.' Candice wrung her hands. She checked her watch. 6 minutes until she had to open the video room. The cat made a horrible gasping sound and then wrenched straight. She stopped mid motion in an uncomfortable looking pose.

Candice wasn't breathing. Diana was totally silent.

Something brown began leaking out of Mimette's nose. The cat didn't move. She didn't close her eyes.

"What the fuck is that?" Diana said in a tiny voice. The plastic syringe dropped to the sand.

"No way," Candice said. She put a shaky hand on Mimette's side and waited for the rise and fall of breath. Her own breathing was ragged. Her mind was white with horror and grief. This couldn't be really happening.

Mimette's chest didn't move. Candice could feel her ribs through that unimaginably plush white and cream fur. It wasn't going to move. The cat was dead.

Mindlessly, she petted the cat. Her fingers curled over the spine and bumped slightly over Mimette's protruding hip bone.

Diana made eye contact. She looked like she was going to be sick. "I…" she let the water in her hand fall. "Did I do that?" Her voice rose pitch in quiet panic. "I didn't mean to- I didn't think it would hurt her."

Candice didn't answer. She should say the truth that of course Diana had done nothing wrong, the cat was critically dehydrated so giving her water was the right thing to do. But it was also true that she wanted to scream at her sister for doing something that had hurt her cat.

Jesus.

She put her hands in her hair. Then she grimaced because she'd have gotten sunscreen in it and it probably looked greasy now. Fuck. Fuck and hell, she had to open the zoom room.

Without saying anything to her sister, Candice picked up the laptop.

The student was already in the waiting room. She put on a big smile and let the 8 year old into the meeting. "Hello, Sakura," She greeted cheerfully. The little girl bobbed a little further upwards, but half of her face was still out of screen. The camera was probably adjusted to a parent.

Class was.. well, it just was. Candice sat a foot away from the cooling body of her cat and she did her job, because they were still in the hole for Marshmallow's vet bills.

When she was done, she closed the laptop. Her smile fell off her face.

Diana looked up at her. She was sitting with her knees against her chest, hugging her legs to her body. Her lower back was pressed against the cat carrier.

Oh.

Candice leaned over to peek inside. Mimette still looked really dead. She was flat and just.. wrong. She just looked wrong.

She licked her lips. "Diana," she said. "We can't take a dead cat on the train."

Diana put her head in her hands. "No one has to know. Anyone asks- she's sleeping. She's very tired. She had a long day at work."

"Yeah, but it's hot and she's going to start to smell. That's a biohazard. And what if people ask what we're doing with a dead cat? I don't wanna get deported for being suspicious."

Quietly, with feeling, Diana said "Fuck" into her fingers.

Candice agreed. She looked at the box. "We have to do something."

Diana groaned. "Ice?" She suggested. "I can walk to a store and we can cool her down."

Candice made a face. "You mean pack it around her? Like a cheesetart."

"Yummy yummy," Diana said dryly. "Or a pack of beer."

"I don't drink beer," Candice bantered back.

"Shouldn't drink this either, so that's fine," Diana dismissed.

Candice snorted. It wasn't funny, but it was. "This is perfect for her," she marveled. She dropped down into the sand. "Absolutely immaculate vibes. She caught a cold and dropped dead a week later. What a waif."

"Absolutely she was the main character." Fabric rustled as Diana moved. "Rude of her honestly, it was supposed to be my big day."

"Big ingenue energy."

"We could bury her here."

Candice picked up sand and let it fall between her fingers. "What, a burial at sea?" She watched the grains fall. "I don't have a flaming arrow with me now."

"Maybe we could make a raft with those sticks."

She didn't bother to look at what her sister eas indicating. "Could actually bury her. In the sand."

There was a pause. "D'you think that's illegal?"

Candice shrugged. "Why would it be? Ground is the ground, right?"

"I found a dead fish up on the beach once," Diana mused. "And a crab."

"Probably the exact same thing happened in that case." Candice looked around. In the distance, she could see families packing up at the shoreline. No one was paying any attention to the sisters. She watched one mom gather up a bucket and toss inside little plastic rakes and shovels. "Bet they sell that shit nearby."

Diana followed her gaze. "Yeah, at the convenience store over there." She paused. "Are you for real?"

Candice unlocked the box to reach in and pet Mimette's body. It struck her as hilarious that Diana had locked it. Why bother? Was Mimette going to get up and go for a swim?

The instant she touched it, she flinched. It felt wrong already. It was weirdly hard.

"Yeah." Her answer was belated and wet. "Yeah, go get me a funereal shovel."

What Diana came back with was primary green and yellow. "Sorry," she said, dropping it and crumpling up the reciept. "They didn't have any colors that don't suck."

"There's no dignity in this specific thing," Candice said wryly. She twisted the shovel around her fingers. "The citrus color scheme is really ruining the funeral." She let her voice twist into genuine sadness.

"No, don't say that," Diana soothed. Her eyes were shiny with tears. "Mimette would have loved that shovel."

Candice sniffled. "You're right," she agreed. "Over here is fine, you think?" She overturned some sand.

"Under the bench," Diana disagreed. "So the seabirds don't dig it up."

"Or kids," Candice agreed. She went to work. When she was tired, Diana took a turn. The sun set while they were digging, making a pile of sand beside the bench. It kept slipping off and into the hole. The light overhead came on.

Finally, they had it deep enough. Candice took Mimette out and pressed a kiss to her forehead. It was terrible. "Goodbye, baby girl," she said thickly. She sniffled. "You deserved better."

"Deserved the world," Diana agreed, probably feeling guilty that her stupid fat Marshmallow cat had been stealing from poor Mimette.

They caught the last train home.