At Least They're Committed

Holding one of the perpetrators with one hand, fingers wrapped securely around his neck, I dip the other hand back into the tub and squeeze the rag, its contents further clouding the warm water. I pull up the dripping cloth up again and continue to work.

“Did you hear that lonesome whippoorwill? He sounds too blue to fly,” I croon softly to Raul as he attempts to jerk his head away. “The midnight train is whining low, and I’m so lonesome I could cry.” Swipe, pat, stroke, dip, little by little the caked blood begins to dislodge from his face, from around his eyes until at last I’m confident the white on his muzzle is clean and the reddish tan around his cinnamon brow is his true color. He whimpers despite being unscathed. “All right, you can go.” I lead him to back door and he scurries away.

Mina was not so lucky. I’d already tended to her, her bruised and bloodied body stretched out across my bed; her sad eyes submissive, grateful for my aid. Gently lifting her legs and paws and rolling her over to asses the damage, I continued to stroke her short, brindle coat and tender flesh with a rag soaked in water laced with Epsom salt. “Go to sleep.” I’d whispered to her as I left her nestled in my bedsheets now spotted with dirt and blood. Her wounds are superficial. A small puncture here, another there.

Upon Raul’s exit, Beulah, who has been hiding behind a crate, at last comes forward. I rinse and refill the bucket and sit on the floor to begin the process one last time. “Did you ever see a robin weep as leaves begin to die?” I sing to her. Her wounds are around her mouth and eyes, confused and swollen as she turns them my way. “It means he’s lost his will to live. And I’m so lonesome I could cry.” The rhythm makes her sigh and I am saddened to see the clear water in the basin get cloudier, darker and bloodier than with any of the others. “Poor baby.” The two of us alone, she patiently lets me bath her. Her wounds, too, are superficial.

I’d found the mayhem when I’d stepped out to feed them tonight after work. First confused by the red caked onto Raul’s face, then gasping as the scene before me came clear: the matted and bloodied Beulah, the blood on the patio, the blood on the sliding glass door, the smears on the outside of the house where one had been cornered trying to take refuge.

So much blood, and yet the harm is minimal. They’re all to blame yet none are and only God knows what triggered this. A neighbor child tossing a bone over the fence? Could be. Shadow is unscathed, which likely means it was motivated by food. So maybe you can take the starving puppy off the street, but maybe you can’t take the mean, competitive streets out of the puppy.

A despondent Bugaboo23 has now run out to get hydrogen peroxide with Maddie attempting to calm her. She came home an hour after our discovery, stood in the back yard and sobbed. “Dear God, how can you try to do everything right? How can you try to help and bad things keep happening?” she cried. I rubbed her back. The question wasn’t aimed at me and it was a good thing because I have no answer.

Sitting now in the dark save for the monitor light, I hum softly to myself, I could cry, I could cry, I could cry.