The Spark

Sawyer Murphy was not cut out for Kindergarten. She had difficulty with lots of things: making friends, learning her sight words and writing her own name. Even in slumber, the little girl could whip herself into such a frenzy; she would have terrible nightmares and had taken up the unfortunate habit of frequent bed wetting. When she had first turned five years old, she’d been fearless: full of spunk and a wicked sense of humour. But a lot had happened in the last year.  

As far as Sawyer could tell, her parents were good people. Her father, James was very clever with computers and the two of them used to have so much fun together playing the games he made for work. The fun had stopped earlier in the year when he had lost his job – Sawyer didn’t really understand why but she had heard him talking on the computer to his friends about something called ‘tech layoffs’ – now he just spent a lot of his time looking sad. Her mother, Luisa was a paediatric nurse at the hospital and she was always very tired. Luisa did not talk much about her work, but Sawyer knew that she looked after very sick children. When she would get home from work, she would give Sawyer a tight squeeze before going into the kitchen to drink wine and cry while she washed the dirty dishes. 

In early July, Luisa asked Sawyer what she would like for her sixth birthday. She armed the little girl with a notepad and a glittery pen and asked her to write a wish list. Without hesitation, Sawyer began writing, earnestly with her tongue sticking from her mouth. Gingerly, she returned the page to her mother. Luisa read the page and her eyes flitted back to the expectant gaze of her daughter. 

‘Are you sure there is nothing else you want for your birthday, my love?’ 

‘No thank you, mummy. Just that please.’ 

‘Mum and Dad will see what they can do, Soy Sauce. Go and brush your teeth, baby.’ 

As Sawyer left the room, Luisa allowed herself to release a strained exhale. 

‘Fucking hell,’ she whispered to herself.  

The kid had only written one thing: I wunt a frend pleez. 

The Murphies were driving home from Sunday evening dinner at Luisa’s parents’ house when James had his brilliant idea. 

‘A cat! We could get her a cat,’ he said, sounding positively thrilled with himself. 

‘For goodness sake, James. Don’t you think that is maybe something we should have talked about before saying it in front of S-A-W-Y-E-R?’ Luisa groaned in reply.

But it was too late, the damage had been done: Sawyer was delighted. By the time the Subaru pulled into the driveway, she’d even picked a name: Sparky.  

James might have gotten them into this mess but Luisa knew that she was going to be the one that would have to get them out of it. On a rare Saturday morning off, she decided that it was the day. She packed the whole ragged bunch of them into the Subaru and took them to Kmart to purchase supplies for a cat. 

‘We have seventy-five dollars to get all the different things we need for your kitty, Sauce. A collar, a bed, a litter tray, some toys. Pick carefully, okay baby?’ 

Sawyer and James set about collecting items, and carefully taking sums on an old receipt they found in his wallet. Forty minutes later they emerged from the store, Sawyer proudly pushing her trolley full of cat paraphernalia. She shook the little pink bell on the collar all the way to the city pound. 

At the pound, they were taken by the attendant – a sturdy looking woman with a name tag that read ‘Sue’ – to the cattery. The vague smell of ammonia was barely covered by disinfectant, and the mood was grim. Cats of all sorts, from sweet fluffy little kittens, to mangy bags of fur that seemed to be barely hanging onto their ninth lives were stacked in two rows. The cages were tiny condos, featuring a compartment where the cat could be viewed from and two private areas, one for a litter tray and the other for a bed. 

 ‘Alright lovey,’ Sue said to Sawyer, ‘see anyone you like?’ 

Sawyer loved all of them, but had her heart set on a kitten. She poked her fingers through the bars of their cages, only to find that they would dart away into the dark hidey holes. Her frustration only made her more insistent and James caught himself wondering if this is what she was like with the children in her class. After her fifth failed attempt, she fell to the floor and her bottom lip began to quiver. 

‘None of them like me!’ she sobbed. ‘Why does no one want to be my friend?’ 

Luisa shot a warning glance at James and mouthed to him through gritted teeth: Do something. It was Sue though, who crouched down and held Sawyer’s gaze. 

‘Come here now lass, stop fussing. Let’s have a look at this fella here. Alright now, hold your hands like this,’ gently, she took Sawyer’s right hand, and showed her how to present it to the cage, ‘She’s got it, mum and dad! Ah, much better.’ 

A little orange cat, purring like a freight train, rubbed his head against the bars of his cage and Sawyer’s fingers. She giggled and let out a little squeal of delight. 

‘Do you think he likes me?’ she asked. 

‘Yes lovey, I think Mr Hyde here is very fond of you,’ Sue cast a wink at Luisa, who mouthed in return: Thank you. 

*

Sawyer had held firm on the name she had selected and so it was that the cat formerly known as Mr Hyde was christened Sparky by his small, doting companion. It quickly became obvious why the pound staff had given him the name Hyde: the cat was chaos personified. He would scale bookshelves and knock down trinkets, climb onto countertops and tear holes in the bread bag with his teeth and, on no less than three occasions, he had vomited directly into a pile of clean laundry. He harboured a particular resentment for James and would attack his ankles whenever he dared to walk down the hallway. 

‘Ah, you little prick!’ he shouted after the cat, who would skid by on the tiled floor to cause mischief in some other room of the house. 

Luisa had been insistent that James was the one who would look after Sparky; he had suggested getting the cat after all, so he should be the one to clean up its litter and to make sure it was fed each day. Day after day though, she would arrive home to the cat screeching at the door, begging to be fed and a litter box stacked with shit. After a couple of weeks, she’d had enough. Luisa unleashed a tirade on her husband: ever since he lost his job he had completely given up, he didn’t cook, didn’t clean, couldn’t even do the one thing she had asked him to do. He looked up at her with doleful eyes and began to weep. Luisa dropped to her knees and threw her arms around him. 

‘I’m sorry James, I’m so sorry.’ 

‘Oh god, I’m useless.’ 

They held each other tightly and cried. Two doors down, Sawyer and Sparky were tucked in bed together, in a state of peaceful repose. 

*

Little by little, things got better. James landed a short-term contract working with an independent game studio, making a children’s game about a mobster lobster; it was a ridiculous concept, but work was work. He made dinner each night and attended to Sparky’s every need. While the cat had become less vengeful towards him it was clear that its allegiance lay with Sawyer and Sawyer alone. She could dress him in pretty princess costumes and push him around the house in a dolly stroller: the cat would bear it all with hardly a grimace. Before and after school, Sparky and Sawyer were practically intertwined: he was a perfect confidante, listening to all the little girl had to say without judgement. Luisa and James couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief as they watched her light return. 

In late October, Sawyer’s kindergarten teacher called Luisa at work. She didn’t know if Luisa and James had been doing things differently at home, she said, but Sawyer had grown so much more confident in the classroom since the beginning of the semester. She had been working with her classmates, improved her reading scores and had even started to make some friends. 

‘That’s wonderful Miss Bell, I’m so glad to hear it,’ Luisa told her. ‘Her dad will be so happy too.’ 

‘Really,’ the teacher chirped down the line, ‘whatever it is you’re doing, keep doing it!’ 

As she hung up the phone, she wondered if all of this might have been because of the cat. 

When Luisa arrived home that evening, James was preparing dinner while Sawyer read a picture book to Sparky. She gave her daughter a kiss on the forehead, and scratched the cat behind the ears before making her way into the kitchen. 

‘Hey Lu, how was your day?’ 

‘Work was work,’ she sighed, ‘but I did have a really nice phone call from Sawyer’s teacher.’ 

‘Oh? That’s great, what did she say?’ 

‘She’s doing great at school, had a huge turnaround since this semester began. Making friends, getting closer to her reading targets, the whole shebang.’ 

‘Oh, heck yeah,’ James said, giving a playful wiggle of his hips, ‘we’re crushing it!’ 

‘You reckon? I think Sparky might actually be the one that’s crushing it,’ she laughed. ‘Do you remember the last time Sauce wet the bed?’ 

‘It’s been a few months now that you mention it.’ 

‘Around when we got the cat, right?’ 

The two of them poked their heads around the door frame to watch their daughter and the cat, curled up with one another. Sawyer stroked Sparky’s face, gently, absent-mindedly; she was perfectly content. 

That night, the three of them ate dinner around the table. Sawyer told her parents all about the craft she had done at school and they laughed at James’ silly jokes. For the first time, in a long time, the weight of the world didn’t feel quite so heavy. 

*

After Christmas, Luisa made the decision to step away from paediatric nursing. She was excellent at her job and well-liked by her colleagues, but she struggled so much to see children suffering ever since she had become a mother herself. An older nurse named Mona took her under her wing and supported her as she transitioned to emergency room nursing. While she still came home from work exhausted, Luisa was excited to be learning new things and was pleased to be enjoying work again. Her schedule was heinous – par for the course for a newbie like herself – with incredibly early morning starts becoming the norm. Luisa fretted about missing out on quality time with Sawyer – the little girl seemed to be growing so quickly before her eyes – but James assured her that he had things under control and she realised with relief that she believed him. Ever since he had been working on the ridiculous lobster game, he had a spring in his step and things at home seemed to be under control. Luisa just had to worry about work, James took care of the rest. 

On a Tuesday morning at the beginning of February, Luisa took her first break of her shift. She had started six hours ago and it was 10AM: the hot summer sun was already blazing in the sky. As she sat down to a cup of tea, she checked her phone and saw five missed calls from James, and a text message he had sent at 7:58 that morning: lu, pls call me back as soon as you can. She felt her heart sink to the floor. 

*

‘James, hey, what’s wrong?’  

‘Fuck, Lu, it’s bad. It’s really bad,’ his voice tremored. 

‘Slow down. What’s happened?’ she asked, afraid of the answer. 

The door was open when he woke up that morning, he told her. He checked Sawyer’s room, Sparky wasn’t there. He went to look for him before she woke up and there he was, lying in the gutter. He looked just like he was sleeping, but he wouldn’t wake up. He hid the body, he panicked.  

‘I didn’t want Sawyer to find out before school. What do we do, Lu? What do we do?’ 

Her ears rang and her mouth went dry. 

*

They went together to pick Sawyer up from school that afternoon. As was her habit, she ran into the house, calling out for the cat. There was no tinkling of the little pink bell, no padding of the paws on the tiled floor. 

‘Soy Sauce,’ James said, breaking the terrible silence, ‘Bub, take a seat on the lounge for me. Mummy and Daddy have to tell you something.’ 

Every second felt like an eternity as Luisa explained – as gently as she could – what had happened to the beloved cat. For fifteen minutes straight, Sawyer howled. Her face turned purple, the snot dripped from her nose and her voice ran hoarse. James rocked back and forth in his seat, pulling at his hair. Luisa felt the urge to slap herself when she caught herself thinking that this had really gone and messed things up. 

*

They buried Sparky below the large lilly pilly in the back garden. Luisa encouraged Sawyer to say some words as they lay his little body to rest, but she couldn’t, instead she cried quietly while James said a few kind words about the cat.

In the weeks following Sparky’s death, Sawyer folded back in on herself: she wouldn’t speak, would barely eat, couldn’t be convinced to leave her room and, to add insult to injury, for the first time in a long time, she wet the bed. She’d built a veritable shrine of the cat in her room; walls pasted with crudely drawn pictures of her and Sparky, and a photo that Luisa had taken of them on the day they had brought him home. She had a complete meltdown when James had suggested that he remove Sparky’s bed from the foot of hers.  On the rare occasions that she did venture from her room, you could hear her coming; Sparky’s little bell tinkling mournfully in her pocket. 

One night, weeks later, as James and Luisa were sitting in bed, they heard the door creak open. Sawyer’s little face appeared, illuminated by the warm yellow glow of lamp light. Sparky’s bell hadn’t alerted them to her arrival. 

‘Sauce! You scared the heck out of us,’ said James. ‘Are you alright kiddo?’ 

‘Can I get in with you, please?’ came the reply. 

Her parents patted the space between them in bed and made room for her. She clambered up and wriggled her legs under the sheets. 

‘It’s nice to hear your voice Sauce, we’ve missed it,’ Luisa said, wrapping an arm around her little shoulders and giving her a kiss on the top of her head. 

‘I really miss Sparky,’ Sawyer said. Her voice was tiny, but she did not cry, ‘I wish I could just see him one more time.’ 

‘Me too, Sauce,’ said James, ‘I even miss how he used to scratch me when I would walk through the hallway.’ 

Sawyer giggled, a little at first, and then uproariously. The three of them stayed up – far too late past bedtime – sharing stories about the little orange cat who had returned their spark.