Tuesday..

The Tourist Nest >>> · I'm a garbage truck driver. Tuesday morning I heard meowing coming from inside a bag on the curb. I was about to throw it in the compactor. One second later and she'd be gone. I ripped the bag open and found a cat inside tied up in a grocery bag inside the trash bag. Double bagged. Someone tied their cat in a bag and put her out with the garbage. She was calm. She looked up at me like she knew. I've thrown away ten thousand bags. This is the one I'll never forget. She's in my cab right now. My supervisor said we don't allow animals in the truck. I said write me up. He didn't. I drive a residential garbage route in a suburb outside of Jacksonville. Same route every Tuesday and Friday. I've been doing this for six years. You throw bags, you dump cans, you move to the next house. You don't think about what's in the bags. You can't. You'd never finish the route. Tuesday morning, 6:40 a.m., I grabbed a black trash bag off the curb at a house in the middle of my route. Normal house. Normal bag. I swung it toward the hopper and heard something. Meowing. From inside the bag. I stopped. I held the bag still. The sound came again. Muffled. Weak. Coming from inside. I put the bag on the ground and ripped it open. Inside the trash bag was a white plastic grocery bag, tied shut. The sound was coming from inside that. I tore the grocery bag open. A cat. Small. Grey and white. Maybe two or three years old. She was curled up in the bottom of the grocery bag with her legs pulled in tight. The bag was tied in a knot above her. She couldn't have gotten herself in there. Someone put her in, tied it, put that bag inside a trash bag, and set it on the curb with the rest of the garbage. Double bagged. Like leftovers. She looked up at me and didn't move. Didn't scratch. Didn't try to run. She was warm and breathing fast and she just looked at me with these huge green eyes. Calm. Like she'd already accepted whatever was about to happen. I picked her up. She was light. Maybe six pounds. She wasn't skinny. She wasn't sick. Her fur was clean. She'd been someone's indoor cat. She was healthy and cared for up until the moment someone decided she was trash. I stood on that curb at 6:40 in the morning holding a cat that was thirty seconds from going into a compactor and I couldn't move for a minute. My hands were shaking. I've thrown ten thousand bags into that truck. I don't listen. I grab and throw. That's the job. If she hadn't meowed at that exact second. If I'd swung the bag one second faster. If she'd been quiet. I can't think about that. I've tried not to and I can't stop. I put her in the cab of my truck on my jacket on the passenger seat. She sat there and didn't move. She watched me through the windshield for the rest of the route. Three more hours. She sat on my jacket and watched me work. I called my wife on my break. I told her what happened. She was quiet for a long time and then she said "Bring her home." When I got back to the yard my supervisor saw the cat in the cab. He said "We don't allow animals in the trucks." I said "Write me up." He looked at the cat. He looked at me. He said "Just get her out of here before second shift." He didn't write me up. I took her to a vet on my way home. She's healthy. Spayed. No chip. No collar. No ID. Someone's pet. Just not anymore. She's at my house now. My wife named her Tuesday. Because that's the day she wasn't supposed to have. I went back to that house on my Friday route. I looked at the curb. Normal house. Trimmed lawn. Nice car in the driveway. The kind of house where nothing bad is supposed to happen. I wanted to knock on the door. I didn't. I don't know what I would have said. What do you say to someone who double-bagged a living animal and put her next to the recycling bin. I kept driving. Tuesday sleeps on our bed now. She follows my wife around the house. She's eating fine. She uses the litter box. She sits on the couch like she's been here for years. She doesn't know how close it was. She doesn't know that one second of silence would have ended everything. She just knows she was in a bag and now she's not and someone's hand is on her back and the world is warm. I've been doing this job for six years. People throw away furniture, clothes, food, appliances. I thought I'd seen everything people throw away. I hadn't. Some things belong in the trash. A cat isn't one of them. Not ever.