Our cat often had kittens and Daddy always quickly disposed of them.

I don’t know if he didn’t know about the latest litter or if this one had just escaped but there it was tiny and bony with orange fur and big blue terrified eyes.

“Shush little one” I said as I tucked it inside my coat. I had some time so I took it upstairs to my bedroom. The little thing lay on my legs and I could feel its claws gripping and ungripping through my dress. 

Watching her little pink tongue dart in and out of a saucer of milk, I decided that she was a she and that she was ‘Aisling’, after Aisling in my class who had fierce orange hair.

I hid Aisling under my bed in my washing bowl.  After dinner and the rosary I headed to bed early. Aisling was sound asleep, curled up in the bowl on a towel. There was a desperate smell in my room and I found puddles of pee and what looked like buttermilk. I would later discover that milk was not good for cats but by then, it was too late. 

I would sneak her out to the yard early every morning. She would tiptoe around and dart back to me at the slightest sound. Eventually she would do her business. I would feed her scraps and then quicksmart back upstairs and into her bowl before anyone awoke.

We had lace curtains, my grandmother had made them before my mother moved in and she moved out to live with my Uncle. Being a cat, Aisling wanted to climb. Maybe there was a spider or a fly but we’ll never know. 

My mother heard a crash from my room. She found Aisling trying to escape her lacey trap on the floor with the curtain rail holding her fast. She was clawing like mad, ripping those curtains to shreds. 

Mammy roared for Daddy. 

The silence which followed was broken by my father’s booted footfalls across the yard. I looked up and saw Aisling dangling from his fist, him gripping her by the scruff of the neck. Her eyes looked unnaturally stretched and his grasp pulled her mouth back over her teeth so that she appeared to be laughing at me. 

“Is this yours girl?” 

“Yes Daddy, I was only playing with her.”

He was walking over to the wall now.

“She could be a replacement for the cat, I thought, she’s fierce good”

“Fierce good?” he swung around. “Destroying a wedding present from my mother, leaving your room to smell like the cow shed.”

I opened my mouth to apologise,plead; whatever it would take but he was quick.

He shifted his hold on her so he had a grip of her two back legs, raised his arm high and swung her down quickly against the top of the wall with a dull thud and what I still think was the beginning of a little, last meow.