By Timothy Yam

It happened on New Year's Day.

I was climbing the stairs of our apartment, in preparation for an upcoming vertical marathon. Vertical marathons are when you run up a tall building as fast as you can. They are exceedingly unpleasant. I have done three.

We fought the night before. It was the fight of a long-term couple, about a minor matter of major significance. I woke up early to climb stairs and get out of the house.

On the fifth floor I saw a flash of movement. A stray kitten. There were many in my girlfriend's building. On the landing was a half-eaten plate of cat food. Somebody had been taking care of it. How nice. I kept climbing. A similar pattern continued for a while. I would get closer to the floor the kitten was on, it would hear me, and I would hear the raindrop pitter-patter of tiny fleeing paws. After some repetitions of this cycle, I crossed over the lift landing and used the other set of stairs, so as to stop scaring it further up the building. Might as well. Who knew how long the damned thing would keep running.

After much pain, I reached the top floor. My legs ached. My heart pounded with lukewarm satisfaction. I took the lift back down to the apartment and poured myself a glass of coconut water. My girlfriend was on the couch, looking through her phone. Before stepping into the shower, I mentioned the kitten and what happened to it. I said it casually. It was only a minor thing.

She reacted differently. Away from its mother, away from whichever Good Samaritan had been taking care of it, the kitten would starve to death. Or worse. Cats have poor depth perception. A one-storey jump looks the same as a fifteen-storey jump. It would not last two days. We had to do something.

We found the kitten on the 13th floor. Or maybe it wasn't. Truth be told, I cannot remember the specific floor. But 13 is a psychologically satisfying number, so let us say that it was on the 13th floor. We found it cowering behind the stairwell drainpipe. Getting close was not an option as it would dart up the stairs again every time we drew near. As such, we tried to lure it to us using the plate of cat food from the fifth floor. We begged. We pleaded. To no avail. Impatient, I suggested that we leave the plate on the stairwell and go home. Surely it would come down once it was hungry? Eventually, she agreed.

Before leaving, she wanted to take a final look to make sure the kitten was okay. She climbed the stairs one at a time, peeking her head around the railing to see where it was. When she saw it, her face turned pale. Voice quivering, she explained the situation. The kitten had jumped onto the scaffolding surrounding the stairwell. I went up to look. It was perched on the thin strip of metal, clutching it with all four limbs. It kept trying to stand. There was not enough room for it to jump back to the stairwell. Gusts of wind buffeted it from all sides. It was mewing, a soft sharp sound, barely audible. This was the first time I had seen it clearly. It was a skinny thing. A tiny grey calico puff of fur shivering in the breeze. It had pissed itself. Drops of urine fell from the railing and scattered in the wind.

We grabbed a broom, a bucket and a towel from the apartment. We stuffed the towel in the bucket and placed the plate of cat food on top. I held it below the trembling ball of fur, trying to get it to jump in. She went to the floor above to try to sweep it in the bucket with the broom, but it was beyond our reach. We begged. We pleaded. To no avail. Urine dripped from the railing into the bucket, staining the cloth yellow. I looked up at it. It looked down at me. It turned away and leapt into the sky.

Someone screamed. Maybe her, maybe me. She rushed down to the floor I was on. We were both crying. Her, holding the broom, me, holding the bucket. The world's saddest cleaning service. Haltingly, we figured out what to do next. Get a shoebox. Get a spade. Do the decent thing. We found the kitten on the ground floor. It had landed on a little grass patch housing a single emaciated tree. Ants crawled over its face. Its chest moved in sharp, short intervals. It was alive. Barely.

It let out a cry that sounded neither human nor animal. It just sounded like pain. There was only one thing to be done. The decent thing. I held the spade over its head, conscious of its weight in my hands. I raised it up. And I put it down. I cannot do it, I said. It's okay, she said. I understand. We called a taxi to bring us to the nearest vet that was open on New Year's Day. They would do what I could not. What a sight we were. Sweaty, tear-stained, clutching a bucket with the little puff of fur inside, mewing in pain with every bump in the road. The driver remained silent throughout.

At the vet, the nurse asked us a host of questions. Name? None. Breed? Don't know. Age? No idea. What happened? She fell. From? A great height. The nurse was reassuring, professional. The doctor would let us know what to do next. Just sign here. I scrawled my signature on the form, barely bothering to read it. Only two words caught my eye, written under the heading 'Description of Animal'.

Kitten, stray.

They rushed it into the operating room while we waited outside. A middle-aged woman was quietly talking on the phone and dabbing her eyes with a sodden wad of tissue. Eventually a man in blue scrubs came out to talk to us. He introduced himself as Dr Jensen. The kitten was in shock. She needed to go for an X-ray. He suspected that her lung had punctured from the fall as her body was filling up with air. Like a balloon. As he said that, his hands mimicked the inflation of the kitten's body. We had to be prepared for the worst. Did we want to put her down now, or did we want to try to save her?

In agreement, we answered. Save her. Whatever it takes. Dr Jensen nodded and went back in. We waited outside again. The middle-aged woman left, still crying. After some time, Dr Jensen came back out. Like a bad sitcom joke, there was good news and bad news. Good news – the kitten had no broken bones. This was a miracle. However, they could not be sure how bad the internal damage was because the air in her body was clouding the X-rays. There might be internal bleeding, organ damage, or both. For now, she was stable and placed in a breathing cage. The first 48 hours were key. If she survived them, then there was a chance.

There was a chance. The doctor advised us to leave. No point sticking around. If the worst happened, they would call immediately. There was, however (and here he hesitated), the slight issue of money. Two thousand dollars would cover the first two days. With her punctured lung, the kitten could not survive outside the breathing cage. Use of the breathing cage was expensive. There was, of course, the alternative. She was a stray. We had no connection to her. The chances of survival were slim, and they had no idea if she could ever regain a decent quality of life. Maybe … and here he stopped, letting the delicate silence hang.

I thought back to the quivering puff of fur on the railing and on the drops of urine in the wind. The cry of pain. The ants on her face. We paid the money. Before we left, we went in to see her. She had been cleaned up and was lying on her side in the cage with a breathing tube stuck in her mouth. She was barely moving, with only the occasional gurgle or twitch. But she was alive.

On the drive home, we discussed what was to be done. She might actually live. But what then? My girlfriend laid out the facts. She could not go back to the stairwell. Constant care and supervision were necessary. If she survived, she was our responsibility. We would keep her. She would be ours. One problem, though. I hated cats. Still do. One scratched me when I was five, and I have borne the scar it gave me since. But still, seeing our kitten in the breathing cage healed the wound a little. So I agreed. We would keep her.

The next few days were a haze of visits to the vet and endless discussions on how to care for our kitten. No open windows. My cat-loving sister would help. Maybe we could drop her off with my Aunt-with-Parkinson's when we went to work. That last idea was quickly shut down. No matter. We would figure it out. These were just minor things. In the meantime, I started telling people – family, friends, colleagues – the story. Kitten falls. Kitten survives. Rush kitten to vet. Kitten lives. Miracle! Adopt kitten. Love kitten. Kitten loves me. The end. Trite, yes, but complete. A psychologically satisfying tale, tied up in a nice tight bow, ready to be told at parties for about five years or so.

For a while, there was good news. She started peeing, so her digestive system was working. They were feeding her out of a drip. She was responding to touch and the air in her body was going away. She was trying to stand. She was a fighter. I took unearned pride in that last statement, like the deadbeat dad of a gifted child. However, I was ignoring everything the vet said after the word 'but'. She could not get enough nutrients from the drip. There was blood in her urine. She could not survive for long outside the oxygen cage. No problem, I said. These were just minor things.

The final minor thing came one Thursday evening. Brain damage. The doctors had suspected for a while, but now they knew. There was a strong possibility of internal bleeding in the brain. She was probably blind as her eyes were not responding to light. Dr Jensen told us that they could continue treating her. It was still worth a shot. The kitten was very young. Recovery, while unlikely, was not impossible. However, who knew what kind of life she would lead, or if we would be able to care for her. And treatment would cost more money. Maybe … and this time, there was no delicate silence. There was no shame in putting her down. We had done more than enough to assuage our guilt. From another perspective, it was ending her suffering.

The doctor told us to go home and think it through. They needed an answer by the next day. He brought us in to see her one more time. She was still lying on her side in the breathing cage, the tube in her mouth. She was moving better, but her limbs still twitched involuntarily, like a child having a nightmare. In the cage, she looked even smaller than she did on the railing. A tiny grey calico puff of fur, clinging to bare life. For the first time, I realised how cute the damned thing was.

That night, we argued over the decision. Keep up the treatment, I said. It was our responsibility to try till the bitter end. We did this to her. Any amount was worth it. As long as there was hope, we must continue. We had to do the right thing. My girlfriend disagreed. It was clear the kitten was suffering. Even if it lived, it would be blind, traumatised, an invalid. We could not continue to cause it more pain. We had to do the right thing. Finally, I caved. I would call the vet in the morning and tell them to put it down. My girlfriend took my hands in hers. We said nothing and cried.

They called before I did. The kitten's neurological signs had deteriorated drastically overnight. She was much weaker and she was coughing out blood. There was no coming back. This time, they were unequivocal. Put her down. Yes, I said. Yes. As I drove to work that morning, I listened to 'Death With Dignity' by Sufjan Stevens, a song he wrote about the death of his mother. I wept and felt faintly ridiculous. Crying over a stray kitten that I had encountered for all of five minutes. How absurd. In the grand scheme of things, it meant nothing. Cats die. Kittens, while cuter, also die. Yet here I was, wallowing in self-created melancholy. The realisation did not make me feel better.

That evening, we drove to the vet to sign some paperwork. They would cremate her and scatter her ashes by the sea. How nice, we said. They asked if we wanted to see her one final time. I wanted to, but my girlfriend said no. She could not bear to. Besides, what was the point? It was merely a body. Before we left, I made a request. Could I amend the admission form? Under her name, it still said 'Kitten, Stray'. I asked if we could change it to the name we came up with during the optimistic period. Furriosa. We had named her after Furiosa, Charlize Theron's character in Mad Max: Fury Road. The one-armed woman warrior who survived against impossible odds. A fighter. Okay, they said. They amended the form. She was cremated under the name Furriosa.

Outside, I apologised to my girlfriend. I was being silly, changing the kitten's name. What did it matter? It was only a minor thing. A vainglorious attempt to impose myself on the situation. There is nothing to apologise for, she said. I understand. That night, we went out for Thai food. We went home and watched something on Netflix. I do not remember what it was. Then we went to bed. And life continued.

Life continues to continue. Seven years have passed. We have been married for five. We have two sons. As I write this, I hear the raindrop pitter-patter of tiny feet. We do not talk about the kitten. I tell her I want to write about it and she groans. What is the point? What is there to say? I cannot answer her. Staring at the laptop screen, I wonder the same thing – what is there to say? No lessons or insights reveal themselves. Only an accumulation of little details, minor things, that add up to nothing more. But within me, it feels momentous, of a scale vast enough to justify listening to a song about the death of an estranged mother and daring to think "yes, that is exactly how I feel."

It is that gap between how it means both nothing and everything that gnaws at me. Seven years ago, a stray kitten died. My life was affected for a week. That was it. Still, in silent moments, I am haunted by memories. Hands mimicking the inflation of a balloon. A half-eaten plate of cat food on a landing. And a tiny grey calico puff of fur, shivering in the wind, pissing itself with fear. In those half-remembered moments all attempts at creating meaning disintegrate in the wind, and in a primal kinship, I feel what she must have felt on that railing – small, helpless, alone, stranded in an indifferent universe. In those moments, I want to reach out and save her, to pull her close and protect her from what is to come.

But I never do. That is not how this story ends. There is no satisfaction in this tale. The kitten turns away. She leaps into the sky. And she falls, forever, far beyond my reach.

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