Image description: A four page black and white comic of my tortoiseshell cat, Bunny, complaining that I won’t let her in from the screen porch.
Panel 1: A small tortoiseshell cat sits on the other side of a glass door, looking up sadly, saying, “Mama! Mama, help! I’m in the screen porch!”
Panel 2: She scratches at the door. “Mama! Mama I’m trapped! I’m trapped in the screen porch! Mama!” she cries.
Panel 3: She looks through the glass with her sad, innocent expression. “I see you, Mama! Can’t you hear me? Why won’t you let me in? What have I done, Mama!”
Panel 4: The left corner is dominated by a close up of her face, as she reminisces about the cat tree in the screen porch. We see her perched on the very top, looking out over the backyard.
She says, “Was I not grateful enough, Mama? You gave me a throne, here in the screen porch! A place where I could look down upon the world as a god!”
Panel 1: While she’s perched atop her cat tree, it begins to rain outside. Bunny looks askance at it from behind the screen.
“But I couldn’t touch it, Mama!” she narrates, now in boxes instead of word balloons, “I could see the rain lavish the earth, but never feel its cool caress!”
Panel 2: A paw rests on the screen. On the other side, two birds chirp, unbothered by the presence of Bunny.
“I could smell the blood of the song birds, but never taste its warmth! I lived as Tantalus in this screen porch, Mama!”
Panel 3: Sitting on a cushioned chair, bunny looks out over the yard, barred from her by the porch screen.
“Tormented by what I could never reach!”
Panel 1 : Another reminiscence, this time of Bunny running through the open door to the screen porch earlier that day while I was taking out the garbage.
“And yet I returned, again and again and again! Was that my sin, Mama? Is this my punishment? To be condemned forever to a hell of my own choosing?”
Panel 2: Returning to the present, Bunny looks up from the otherside of the door, her eyes wide.
“Is this what you call justice, Mama?” She says. “Is this what you call love?”
Panel 3: From Bunny’s perspective we see me; I am ignoring her, going about my business. She calls out to me, “Answer me, Mama! Mama!”
Panel 4:I glance back at her, unmoved by her cries. “Mama!” she yells.
Panel 1: Pulling out we finally see more of the wall which has the door to the screen porch. Directly beside it is a cat door that goes through the wall, out into the screen porch. Another cat, Bunny’s sister Maggie, is coming through the cat flap with no issue.
I say, “ Bunny, I know you know how to use the cat door.”
Clawing at the window, tears in her eyes, Bunny screams “MAMA!!”
