Bonzer Words!: Best Left Unsaid
Unless Colleen McMillan's grown-up daughter reads Open Writing, she will never know what became of her pet bird.
I barely noticed that the laundry door was slightly ajar. My arms were full of clothes. I dumped them in the clothes basket, not yet registering the unusual silence; I turned to check the water in Charlie's cage. The door gaped open. Except for a fluff of blue feathers the cage was empty, his water bowl was empty. It had been knocked over.
I flicked my eyes all around the room. Could Charlie have opened the cage? He was a very clever little bird, my daughter—his loving owner—was always telling me. Could he have fled to his freedom through a door carelessly left open? Charlie, Charlie, I called, but there was no answer. He always answered. I looked again still half, only half, expecting him to land on my shoulder and start nibbling my ear. I saw again the upended water bowl, the fluff of blue feathers, and unnoticed before, a faint feather trail, just a feather here and there leading to the laundry door.
I knew what was lying sunning himself on the path outside the laundry door. As I opened the door fully he raised his green eyes to me, smiled, I swear, and arching his magnificent black back made to purr around my legs. I stepped back quickly. Caught on his whiskers were two small blue feathers—all that remained of poor Charlie.
I wanted to hit him, but knew he wouldn't understand. Charlie was a bird. He was a cat. Cats catch and eat birds; end of story.
I dreaded my daughter's imminent return from school. She was too young to understand how one beloved pet could kill another; that the sick little kitten she had brought home from school one day and loved and cared for until he had grown into this splendid animal could kill the little bird she had finger-trained since he was a fledgling and painstakingly taught to say quite a few words.
I decided truth was best left unsaid. I removed the evidence of violence, left the cage and laundry doors ajar, picked up puss and took him upstairs where I knew he would happily sleep in a chair safe from suspicion and waited till my daughter came home.
She cried of course, but lived first in the hope Charlie would return, then that he had got lost and found another good home and finally she decided he'd gone off to find a mate and build a nest and one day he might bring his babies back to show to her.
My daughter is now a married woman with children of her own and I am sure has long since forgotten poor Charlie, so what would be the point of telling her now. Some things are best left unsaid.
© Colleen McMillan
