A bloody mess lay near the median strip. A small body sliced in half by the passage of a car wheel, still wearing the tire imprint like a new t-shirt, the head and the rear of the animal still intact.

I am paying attention because I am looking for my cat. She has been missing for two days. Can this be Dolly?

I desperately tell myself the body is too small. I know it can’t be her. It doesn’t have a distinct feline quality and even from a distance there isn’t enough white under the chin. Despite the facts, I make myself walk past this detritus and take a look, like a practice run. 

I know this little mangled body is a foreshadowing, placed here by the master author of my tragic life. It is a peek into the imminent future when I will find her, a bloody pancaked mess left by a killer driver or a picked clean set of bones left by the local coyote.

“Dolly, Dolly” I call even though I know it is in vain, this body is well past hearing.

As I get closer I see a small white tail. As I pass by its head I see large rabbit ears and its bulging bunny eyes are still wide open, startled.

I search up the street. It is April and nature has an early spring rubbish look. Branches from the last ice storm are scattered on the brown and mustard-colored ground. The grass is worn out from winter’s harsh dominion, trying to green up but still repressed by swinging temperatures and inadequate sun.

I search throughout my grounds. I pass the perennials making valiant attempts at springtime color. I scan my beach front, noting the dock is now rotting from too many years of inactivity. I see that my 24 year-old daughter’s toddler swing is still casting about in the April wind. We must really move on and remove it. Its a disgrace.

This is turning into an examination of all the things that need tidying and less like a search for my dead cat. Now I am not only depressed by the certain loss of my kitty but that I am also a miserable homeowner. It has all become too much. I must retreat inside, but first I pick up my newspaper in the green Boston Globe box.

As I reach in, a streak of brown, black and white flashes past. I recognize the familiar rush of Dolly,  my cat now returned safely home.

As I walk to my front door the lawn seems to have greened up a bit and my dock reminds me of summer sun coming. The swing can stay at least another decade.