booker prize shortlist 2003

This is not a good way to start the week.

So Iapos;m driving to work this morning, on University Drive fairly close to the campus, when I see a large gray cat come out of the shrubbery on the other side of the road and start charging across. I immediately hit the brakes because I can tell the cat is not going to stop, and indeed it doesnapos;t and runs right over the median and onto my side of traffic. He cleared my lane with plenty of room to spare.

Unfortunately the car on my right side was either unaware of the cat or unable to react in time, and the catapos;s head impacted violently with the car just behind the left rear wheel. The cat tumbled and ended up in a curled up heap in the center of the lane, unmoving and, after a hit like that, very likely dead. There wasnapos;t a damn thing I could do about it. I was in the fast lane of a major road and couldnapos;t exactly stop. And even if I had been able to stop, what could I do?

So in order to try and catalog this incident my brain quickly dredged up all the other times Iapos;d seen an animal actually get hit by another vehicle. I saw a large dog get hit by a pickup truck once (to his credit the guy at least stopped and tried to help the owner out). Another time a squirrel ran right in front of my car, I slowed down but the car next to me didnapos;t and the squirrel got run over. Again, nothing I could do. Both times those things bothered me, but I was able to blot them out after a few hours, and indeed theyapos;re already fading back into my subconscious again.

This time it was a cat that got killed right in front of me, and I am having a much, much harder time "un-seeing" this particular incident.

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