My mother's cats

My father was quite a strange man and very complex.  Kind, loving and playful one minute and stern, and seemingly lacking in compassion the next.  I never really knew where I stood with him a lot of the time.  One of my earliest memories set the tone of our relationship from that day onwards.

I remember it being one afternoon, when my father came to me and said  "Come, we're going to shoot cats".  These happened to be three of my mothers favourite cats, one being a huge, fluffy, Persian type cat with grey and white colouring and wearing voluminous plus fours.  The other two were more ordinary looking.

I can still hear the noise of the shotgun and see the bits of fur twirling through the air and the limp bodies of the cats, lying draped across the big stones underneath the gnarled apple trees near the pig sty.  Although it happened so many years ago, the memory of those trusting cats rubbing themselves against my fathers legs before being executed, still stands out in stark relief, deeply etched into my mind for all time.

My perception of my father at that tender age of four was changed forever.  I remember asking him "Why are we killing cats?"  The memory of his answer eludes me, perhaps there was none.  In retrospect, I think my father was very much a law unto himself and rather sadistic to boot.  I never heard what my mother thought of it all, but my witnessing the ghastly demise of our wonderful fluffy cats must have blocked out  a lot of what happened that day.  I can't even remember where my father buried them.  I do remember though, that after shouldering his gun, we solemnly made our way back past the pig sty, past the cattle kraals and the stables, down the rutted road and back to the old house.  Just one more puzzling riddle stored up at the back of my mind.