Yes, ummmmmm..... so,.... I threw a cat down the hill. Seriously. It died, of course, as one might expect. No surprise there.
No, no, no, no.... you've got it all wrong! I didn't KILL the cat!!! The cat was already dead. I say "as one might expect" and "no surprise there", since OF COURSE the cat must've died for me to be throwing it down the hill.
It was a black and white cat. Aside from its colors, it was stiff. I imagine it had died the previous evening, because I hadn't seen it there the previous day. Perhaps the night was too cold for an old cat. On some occasions I'll be awoken to the sounds of raccoons brawling in the wee hours of the morning. Perhaps the cat had entered into a fatal conflict with one such vicious scavenger.
However it had met its end, it lay there sprawled out on its side, as if luxuriating in the afternoon sun - a little bit too motionless as I approached it, however, and completely unresponsive to my limited vocabulary of cat noises: pssss...wssss....wsss...wsss, kitsy-kitsy-kitsy, and of course meowwww (seriously). It was obviously no longer of this mortal realm - all nine lives spent. Two rather enterprising flies had already staked their claim and were settling on different parts of the body, perhaps in search of good feeding spots or a suitable entry point for laying maggot eggs.
I assumed that it was a feral cat, since I could see no collar. Feral or not, though, no collar meant no way of returning the lifeless corpse to its loving owner. I wasn't about to spend hours walking around the neighborhood holding a stiff-as-starched dead cat by its tail and ringing people's doorbells.... "Excuse me ma'am, sorry to bother you and all that, but are you missing a dead cat? Oh, I apologize. I didn't mean to upset your children. Didn't mean to interrupt your Sunday breakfast. Hope I didn't spoil your appetite."
So, there was only one thing to do. Toss it, and toss it hard. The backyard of the house falls away into a kind of canyon with a creek. It's all wild and protected land, where deer and coyotes roam. I wasn't about to touch the thing, so I went into the garage to find a suitable implement of hurling. It was to be a garden fork. With this implement, I carefully lifted the creature, still not a hundred percent certain it was dead and feeling an irrational aversion to "hurting" it with one of the spikes of the fork.
The whole cat was now on the fork, with its head no longer being supported by the ground and sagging off the edge of the fork, while its legs remained stretched out firmly. Like this, I walked carefully to the edge of the backyard, not wanting to drop the cat and have to deal with lifting it again. At the edge of the retaining wall, I contemplated for a moment.
I contemplated the specifics of how I could successfully hurl the cat as far down the hill (and as far away from the house) as possible. I contemplated just the fact that I was about to hurl a cat. I contemplated what would happen to the cat's remains, and the possibility of foul odors being generated by its decay. I contemplated the possibility that neighbors who may be relaxing in their backyards and gazing off into their beautiful view may be shocked out of their calm repose to behold the spectacle of someone hurling a cat down a hill. I contemplated that no loving burial was afforded this wretched beast.
Once I had completed processing these thoughts, I was ready for the act. The cat's "spirit" was gone and I was left to dispose of its life's final waste. I sank down a bit, my knees bending, my arms stretched back to give me an optimal arc for swinging. With one smooth and very well executed motion, if I do say so myself, I swung the fork with all my might, hurling the cat's corpse what seemed like 40 feet.
It was a surreal thing to experience, yet I approached it in a matter of fact state of mind, as if cleaning up a jar of jam that was dropped on the kitchen floor, or sweeping up an inconvenient pile of leaves on the driveway. It was a surreal thing to see: a dead cat flying through the air. My typical day does not involve hurling cats.
After this final flight, the cat projectile reached its azimuth in a humble patch of wild shrubbery, there to be presumably picked at by red-tailed hawks, turkey vultures, ravens, and any number of other carrion-craving creatures. If there is to be a moral to this story at all, it must be that hurling a cat makes for an unusual journal entry.