That cat was weird. He was sniffing flowers. The man had spotted him a long time ago. A dirty white cat with sky-blue eyes. He was sniffing flowers…
Imagine, ladies and gentlemen, sniffing flowers in a small clearing in the middle of a large apartment complex. There were people walking around with dogs. There were cars running around, spewing roars and puffs of smoke. And he was…
Sniffing flowers. He was completely out of this world. And in his feline eyes shone an impossible happiness. The man told him so:
– It’s not a cat’s business to sniff flowers. You have to look for food, run from the dogs, hide.
The dirty white cat looked at him with eyes full of amazement. Heavenly blue eyes. And the man drowned in those eyes. He sighed heavily, stroked the out-of-this-world cat, and left him food and water every day. Besides…
Besides, he walked around the yard and bowed to all the dog handlers and motorists. And he would ask:
– Don’t hurt that white one. I’m begging you. He’s not a right cat. He likes flowers, you see. He can’t defend himself.
The dog handlers and motorists smiled and promised.
A man tried ten times to take Impossible Happiness home. That’s what he called him. Because, he saw that expression for the first time in his life. But he recognized it immediately. That’s how pure naive souls look at the world.
He tried to pick it up, but to no avail each time. The cat would tear itself out of his hands just before the driveway and run off to its little clearing. And then looked at the man with a look full of reproach.
“How, where to, it’s here. Where are you taking me?”
The man sighed heavily and, stroking the stubborn cat, went home.
One morning the man saw several dog owners bent over and wringing their hands over their pets. Someone had scattered poisoned bait around the yard.
The man ran to the clearing, foreboding evil. He was out of breath, and his heart was beating so fast that it seemed to be about to burst out of his chest!
Impossible Happiness was lying on his back, paws spread apart. His unseeing gaze was fixed on the sky, which resembled the color of his eyes. The man dropped to his knees beside him and made a sound full of horror and pain.
Impossible Happiness, of course, was tempted by a piece of sausage. A poisoned sausage…
– What was that for? What was that for? Why? Well, why? How, how, how, how…?” he kept repeating and repeating.
Inside him sat the terrible weight of misfortune and the realization that he could not save and prevent.
There was no strength to look at the cat’s eyes, lifelessly staring upward. The man stood up and, staggering, unaware of anything, went somewhere. Then he stopped and whispered:
– No. No. You can’t do that. It’s not human. We must bury him.
He came back and picked up the small, light body, pressed it to him and went. Where he was going, he could not say himself. He only woke up on the outskirts of town. He found a large spreading tree and with his hands began to dig a small grave.
Then he turned to Impossible Happiness and began to talk to him. He tried to explain something important and very right to him. But he kept getting confused and starting over. Then he picked it up and put it in the hole he had dug. And then…
Then it seemed to him that something twitched in the cat! Either from the wind, or from the fact that he had moved it.
But the man immediately wiped his hands on his new shirt and pulled out a dirty white body and began to feel it. After a few minutes he thought he felt faint heartbeats. Bringing the cat’s belly to his ear, he listened…
Thank God, there was silence outside of town. And he heard. He heard a distinctive thumping sound inside!
The man jumped up and ran. He caught a cab on the road and confused the driver, explaining what happened and where he had to go. The cab driver, without asking or uttering a word, stepped on the gas. The car shrieked and sped away.
Only when the doctor was examining the cat and preparing instruments, syringe and system, the man suddenly realized that he had not paid the driver. He jumped out onto the street, but it was empty. The cab was gone.
The recovery was difficult and long. More than once more the man went to the doctor, and once again he saved the life of the dirty white cat. Still, fate was favorable to Impossible Luck this time.
He recovered, and skinny, with trembling paws, walked around the apartment and looked around.
The man bought flowers in pots especially for him and placed them all over the floor. The cat stopped near each of them and smelled them. Then he looked at the man, and the man seemed to see joy in his cat’s eyes.
– Did I tell you? Did I tell you? – repeated the man. – Told you it’s not a cat’s business to smell flowers. How many times I tried to take you home. Well? Well?
The cat looked at the man and purred softly. He liked it. He felt good.
The man would pick up the weak skinny body and, settling on the couch and putting Impossible Happiness on his lap, stroked for a long time. There the cat went to sleep.
This is not the end, ladies and gentlemen…
Someone else scattered poisoned bait in the yard several times, and several more cats and dogs were poisoned.
The man didn’t get his hopes up about the cameras on the house. He realized that whoever was doing this also knew of their existence. He put up his own camera. Small and completely inconspicuous. He put it in that clearing where Impossible Happiness had sniffed flowers before.
And one day, while checking the tapes, he found what he was looking for. One of the neighbors, leaving his car in the parking lot in the evening, was obviously scattering something around the yard. He was doing it surreptitiously, but the camera saw everything.
In the morning, the man picked up all the pieces of sausage and went to a veterinarian he knew. He asked him to do an examination of what was inside, and a week later
A week later he got a phone call. The veterinarian confirmed that there was poison in the samples submitted.
The man hung up the phone and wondered. Impossible Happiness sat next to him and looked at him with his sky-blue eyes.
– No violence,” the man told him, and the cat meowed in agreement.
The next evening, toward nightfall, the man took a small gym bag, in which he put something heavy and a small can of paint, and went outside. Putting a hood over his head, he headed for the parking lot.
The next day…
There was a commotion in the yard of a large apartment complex. Police and a tow truck stomped by a mangled car with a strange inscription on the side:
“To Impossible Happiness.”
The cops sighed heavily and tried to figure out what had happened here. The owner of the car was beating his chest and screaming. He was screaming and swearing that he had never laid a finger on anyone or done anything wrong in his life. And that he didn’t understand why it happened.
A man stood nearby with a crowd of animatedly talking neighbors and watched. Separately, a group of scowling men stood. They looked suspiciously at the owner of the wrecked car. They were dog owners whose pets had been poisoned by poisoned sausages.
They were clearly waiting for the police to leave.
The owner of the wrecked car looked at them and looked away. He explained to the police that he had to go to work right away, and that he was counting on them. Then he walked quickly out of the courtyard.
No one else could see him in the apartment complex.
And the man sat at home and stroked the back of Impossible Happiness.
– Here, I say,” he explained to the cat, “you and I are not advocates of violent methods. You and I, God forbid, do not do such things…
Impossible happiness purred contentedly. He was in agreement. The man stroked his back, and there was impossible happiness in Impossible Happiness’s sky-blue eyes. He dozed quietly…
