tuesday

3 In the afternoon Katty came to tell me one of the cats was found dead.
She asked if I had heard anything in the night. I was about to say no but, yes:  the cat fight.
That ridiculous, neurotic journaling is actually helpful. I check and can tell her the exact time I heard it. She points to the hedge and says it was just on the other side. That's what the other two cats were doing this morning at dawn. They were just sitting on this side, staring toward the hedge-row. It was so odd.

But Katty is certain it was not a fight. She says the animal was cut very badly across the skull; she thinks by someone with a machete.  I remember the window rattle. In hindsight, there was no wind to rattle the window and it would have been plural, right?  It would hardly be just one window.  I tell her this.
We go lock the door and then pull hard on the handle. Yes.  That's the sound.
The thought of someone trying to get in my room is awful. With a machete.  A person who would chop at a cat.
It's a little sickening in the pit of my stomach.
I'm the only guest here.  The German guy has left and Katty and her husband have an apartment on the second floor, on the far side of the building.
Sondra warned me against using internet cafes because people figure out where you live and know what you have. But who would have seen me? Oh. Upstairs.  To get a signal I have to sit by the balcony railing on the 2d floor porch. Anyone in the neighborhood could see that. 

It's not that guy from the restaurant up the road who made friends with me and asked me friendly questions, right?

It was one thing when I went to put on my Keds one day and realized they were gone, leaving me with only flip-flops. But, someone with a weapon at 4.30 in the morning, pulling on my door handle and killing a pet. wtf?
I should go; now please.


An hour later I go into town to use the phone at Caribeans & leave another message for Denise.