and found the cats strung up by
their tails from our front gate,
gutted and skinned and bleeding
out, their heads chopped off. On our
front wall someone had written in
Afrikaans, “Heks”—“Witch.”
Colored people, apparently,
were no more progressive than
black people on the issue of cats.
I wasn’t exactly devastated
about the cats. I don’t think we’d
had them long enough for me to get
attached; I don’t even remember
their names. And cats are dicks for
the most part. As much as I tried
they never felt like real pets. They
never showed me affection nor did