“Taking the cat to the vet” by Melody Sun
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Taking the cat to the vet” by Melody Sun.
Taking the cat to the vet
By Melody Sun
It takes a partnership to catch the cat:
She chases after —
I open the carrier.
Two zippers kiss each other on the track,
the cat, hissing in the bag.
The receptionist asks for the cat’s name
which we forget, like a careless dad.
We don’t call her by her legal name.
At home, she’s our chou-bao, our stinky baby.
Organ failure, the vet said.
What an ugly phrase.
On the other side of the office wall,
our baby was waiting,
her blood drawn, a patch of fur shaved at her front.
And I know, years later,
I will hear this phrase again from a human vet.
On the other side of the office wall,
my mama will be waiting,
her blood drawn, her hair shaved like a monk.
I hope, at least,
my partner will be beside me again, at that time.
Copyright © Melody Sun
Melody Sun is a queer Chinese Canadian writer living in Vancouver. Born in China, she immigrated to Canada when she was fifteen years old. Melody graduated from The Simon Fraser University Writer’s Studio program in 2022. Her work has appeared in Grain, The Baltimore Review, The Fiddlehead, Ricepaper Magazine, Collective Reflections, and 100 Stories: I am 1.5 Gen. Besides writing, Melody is passionate about reading, doing stand-up comedy, and (most importantly) smashing the patriarchy.
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