I just got back home from Finland, and I’ll probably make a post pretty soon about how everything was, but for now I feel the need to share something really sad that happened yesterday while we were driving to the boat.

WARNING: The following contains a fairly graphic description of something very tragic, and you may find it disturbing. Read at your own risk!

The cat ran out into the road, right in front on the car. It was a ginger tabby. There was nothing we could have done, really. It came out of nowhere. Morten was driving. He hit the breaks as soon as he saw it, but it was all he could do not to crash into a ditch.

The others all got out of the car. I did, too, because what if it was still alive? What if there was something I could do to help?

It wasn’t. I went closer than I would have needed to, because I could see it at once. But like watching a train wreck I went closer anyway.

I only looked right at it for a second. Its skull had been smashed. Not in the sense of brains all over the pavement, but its jaw was dislocated and its tongue was hanging a lot further out than it should. Its eye had popped halfway out of its socket. It looked comical, before it struck me how sick it was.

Then Morten grabbed me, turned me away and hugged me, while my mum moved the cat away from the road and put it in the ditch. Some dignity. I realised that it was probably worse for Morten than it was for me. After all, he’d been driving.

We got back in the car. We had a boat to catch. I sat for a while. Then I thought about the popping eye and the tongue. Then I cried. Then I felt sick. Then I just got sleepy, and snoozed for a while. When I woke up I felt better, but I can’t close my eyes without seeing that desperately sad thing in my mind’s eye. Dead.