My violent run-in with an animal that led me to A&E
Poet and artist Frieda Hughes has a blood-soaked encounter with a feline in distress
Accident and Emergency
The terrified cat was stuck and screaming.
Black rubber gloves for gardening
Gave me a good grip on its scruff and spine
To haul it out of its predicament. But terror
Is the teacher of unreason; as I lifted the writhing animal
It twisted and spat and clawed, biting me in all directions,
And the black rubber skin that I’d borrowed was nothing
Against the onslaught of sharpened nails that furrowed my flesh
And teeth that savaged the top off my right thumb.
It staggered away, dragging the shadows
Of its eight remaining lives. Disinfected, with a clean dressing,
Blood continued to seep through layers of everything porous.
The ground blistered and tilted as the walls slid sideways
And the chair lurched when I tried to sit. A&E was another world
Where time stood still beneath the clock that told me how much
Of my friend’s evening I had stolen. Her company
Kept the spiral in my head from tightening
As three hours become four and I’d only seen triage.
Like a memory of daylight, I remembered the morning dog walk
Through the wild garlic on the riverbank….