For Butters:

My cat, Butterscotch, died that day that Nasif brought the Uzi for Show & Tell, pointed it at my head and said, " Teacher, you want me to show you how it shoots?" with wobbly arms and sweaty seven year old fingers.  Butterscotch, the cat that I’d spent the past sixteen years of my life teasing and tormenting, cuddling and combing.   A cat that liked to bathe in spilt oil beneath our old van and tan his candy colored fur in the hot July sun—always walking, always looking ---with sleepy eyes and a lazy stroll. 

 That day, I found it hard to digest the finalization that comes with the death of a companion you have shared your life with for so long.  I couldn’t quite stomach the fact that there would never be another family visit where I would find him running sideways down our driveway to greet me, no more moments freeing dust clots from his spoiled fur on a yellow blanket in our front yard, and I would never again hear the threat in my dad’s voice as he found out ‘I’d snuck the cat in the basement once again’---or my apologies: I just wanted to keep him warm dad, I just wanted to keep him warm. 

  It was harder, still, because I was in Sudan and I couldn’t be there for him as he said goodbye and I lost him forever. Because, you see, I had always planned on being there for that, being there to comfort him in his ill and broken state, to look into his eyes and let him know how much he meant to me, how much I appreciated him.

 That afternoon, I sat on the porch of my dusty Sudanese flat and cried for the sadness that I felt from loosing Butterscotch. But no matter how hard I tried I couldn't find tears to shed for the memory of that slick black barrel, a perfect O at my heart, threatening my sanity, bullying my life. I couldn't cry even when I remembered my little students, shivering in their fragile frames; pancakes on the floor with wide trusting eyes, calling me: 'teacher! teacher!' 

 No I could cry only for the cat… because the cat I understood. Even the death of him, I could wrap my mind around; the death of him I could understand.  But Uzi’s in the hands of children…that was something I couldn't, something I would not ever understand.