Flash Nonfiction by Jen Bryant
SHELTER
My first January in Ohio, the river’s surface froze solid. Patches of dirty snow accumulated in parking lots. The sky, the snow, the asphalt: everything was a dull, unrelenting gray.
After brewing my morning coffee, I stepped onto the patio, where two melamine bowls were tucked under a lawn chair. I poured fresh water into one and dropped a fistful of dry kibble into the other.
Next to the bowls, straw spilled out of a Styrofoam cooler tipped on its side, a makeshift refuge built for the skinny tabby cat I’d seen slinking around the apartment complex’s perimeter. Despite my efforts to befriend her, she scattered when I approached, preferring to regard me with cautious green eyes from a safe distance.
Back inside, as my own two housecats napped in the warmth of our living room, I peeked through the kitchen blinds. The tabby cat crept onto the patio. As she dipped her head towards the water bowl, I noticed that the tip of her left ear was missing. She drank greedily, then climbed into the Styrofoam shelter, curled into a ball, and closed her eyes.
That winter, frigid cold gripped the Midwest, stealing the breath from my lungs when I went outside. The tabby cat took up residence on the patio, nibbling at the food each morning and bedding down in the shelter at night. If I opened the door even a crack, she scrambled over the fence and disappeared behind the Dumpster.
In early spring, as the sun returned and the snow melted, I stepped outside to find a mouse on my doormat: neck broken, limbs curled inward. Swallowing an involuntary shriek, I looked around. Where had it come from?
The straw rustled then, and the tabby cat emerged from her shelter. This time, instead of bolting, she sauntered over to where I stood. Arching her back towards my tentative fingertips, she softly began to purr.
Jen Bryant’s writing has appeared in The Sun, Ms., BUST, Anodyne Mag, and elsewhere. She is an editor at MUTHA Magazine and a creative nonfiction reader for Mud Season Review. Originally from the South, she currently lives in the Midwest, where she manages grants for a small but mighty nonprofit.
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