"Make sure as you skin your cat, if you have a female, which I think most of you do, to check for mamillary tissue!"
Casper rolled his eyes and picked up the scalpel to start cutting the horrid calico open. His name isn't really Casper. It's David. Weird kid. He was one of those kids who was just too smart to fit in. Plus he was relatively sadistic.
Our cat didn't have mamillary tissue, but it was pregnant anyway. We cut her open to find this monstrosity of a uterus...only we didn't really know it was the uterus right away. We couldn't figure out what it was, so we asked.
"Oh my goodness! Didn't your cat have any mamillary tissue?" Obviously Mrs. Schlossnagle was as perplexed as we were, especially when we all shook our heads and she checked for herself. But we were right. No mamillary tissue whatsoever.
So we performed a C-section. There were 5 kittens.
Actually they weren't kittens yet. But they were advanced enough to have claws (kinda like Juno...when that Asian girl tells her her baby has fingernails). They looked like little dogs actually. And they were pinkish white. They were also pretty small. They fit right in the palm of your hand. We passed them around then dropped them into a jar of formaldehyde, so they would be back in familiar surroundings, and stuck them on the shelf next to the almost ancient goat embryo. I'll bet you $5 they're still there.
The cat dissection turned into our final exam. We numbered a piece of paper to fifty and rotated from cat to cat, identifying the different parts and identifying what their uses were. There turned out to be only one male cat, so he was easy. He had all the parts the other cats didn't. I looked at my cat. It looked like a broken toy, especially with the way the uterus spilled out of it.
It looked like a leathery balloon, or a piece of one at least. The C-section didn't make it look very pretty. "Snowden's secret," I remember whispering to Casper. He laughed like I knew he would. I didn't laugh though. It wasn't funny. It was tragic. I told myself I should respect the dead more, but myself answered that if they were dead it shouldn't matter.
But it does matter.
Everyone dies--what is so special about that?
I don't know, it just does.
It matters because it is matter, and that's as common as a grain of sand on a beach. It is a grain of sand on a beach.
It should matter.
But it doesn't. Remember a couple months ago that crazy sniper kid went around shooting people? Life went on as usual. Remember that spine you did?
What about it?
You did that during the sniper attacks. It would have turned out the same if those people hadn't died. The anatomy is the same.
But it should have mattered.
It didn't.
Is that a vein or an artery?
Isn't it all the same?
No, I thought. It matters.
Why?
I had to stop for a moment before I figured out my answer. Because...
Because...?
Because then there is no God.
That's all I remember.
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