A macabre departure from the purely Marchigiani

Death is a strange subject. Some shy away from it, ignoring its ever-present threat, perhaps being able to live more in the moment as a result. Others are aware of it, fear it, and take extreme precautions to minimize its likelihood. Then there are some that immerse themselves in it, study it, write about it – like Gabriela Garcia Marquez, for example, who penned a number of death-obsessed short stories around 1950, which I’m now reading in his “Collected Stories.”

I fall into the category of those with a curiosity verging on morbid fascination, sort of like a moth drawn to a flame. However, Garcia’s stories go a bit far for my comfort level. That’s because he makes it so personal – my curiosity is perhaps a little more removed, in more of a Monty-Pythonesque “What’s it like?” sort of way.

I recently found myself fixated by a hunt of Mr Young’s. In spite of our inherent animal-loving natures, we’re reluctantly encouraging him to cull the local mouse population, given their penchant for eating through and defecating on our possessions. They’re extremely quick, the blighters, and so I was amazed at Mr Young’s dexterity in chasing it down, given his own prodigious propensity for lethargy. I guess those natural tendencies kick in when such quintessential feline opportunities come along.

In any event, having caught it and deposited it in the long grass where its escape was more difficult, he proceeded with the age-old cat-and-mouse game, pretending he wasn’t interested and then pouncing as the mouse tried to make a dash for it. After 20 minutes of this, which took him under the caravan and back out again, I came to investigate, and found the mouse on the ground in front of him. It was literally kicking its last, its hind legs kicking as if to try and get away, but – with its back broken – producing no momentum beyond a futile desperate jerk. A thousand thoughts ran through my head, from “Ag, shame, it’s so cute”, to “Just half-an-hour ago this mouse was on its way somewhere, oblivious of its pending fate.”

It’s this latter thought that preoccupies me. Not that the mouse had dinner plans and his friends are now wondering why he hasn’t turned up at the restaurant yet, or even that the mouse necessarily has thoughts of the future. But we do. And when death strikes, tomorrow doesn’t matter any more. That new car you were going to buy, the struggle to pay the rent, the fight you were having with your mom, next year’s Rugby World Cup … none of them are even remotely interesting anymore. Sudden and final. A complete and utter change of plans. Sort of colours our preoccupation with our current plans, doesn’t it?

Of course there are a myriad other subjects that spring from such thoughts, most of them spiritual, but this is not the place for those things. What the mouse did not see, having passed into the afterlife, was how Mr Young then danced, twisted, contorted, and leapt as he threw the corpse in the air, attempting to catch it as it flew lifelessly in its morbid arc. It was a ceremony, a rite, a celebration. I’d never seen Mr Young do that. Nobody has ever taught him to do that. It’s entirely innate. I guess he has his own fascination with death.

After he was done with his ritual, he proceeded to eat it, but only half … the top half. All that was left of the little rodent that was scurrying along the wall less than an hour before was a tail, two hind legs, and the lower part of its torso. I left it where it was, to see what other death-related custom might emerge in Mr Young’s behaviour.

But it was not to be. The next morning it was gone, devoured by another carnivorous creature passing in the night. Mr Young didn’t even look for it. Was that the mouse’s destiny in being put on this earth – to hone the skills of a domestic cat that didn’t need the nutrition, and to provide a free meal for one that did? Hmmm, wonder what mine is …