Let me begin by explaining that I have always felt deeply for animals. As a child, I was afraid of people, but found easy connection and endless fascination in the animal world. Once, in second grade, on the playground after it rained, I cried because some boys were deliberately stomping on pavement-stranded earthworms. Worms. But they suffered, and so I cried.

One weekend during college, Alex and I went to visit his friend Haley, a student at Denison University. The evening of our arrival, we sat around a campfire with eco-minded students who had made their own houses out of tires and mud; sang along with Haley’s roommates to Mulan while their new kitten napped; and played flip-cup at a moneyed, fratty house party, brightly lit and clustered with dozens of helium balloons overhead dangling ribbons like jellyfish tentacles.

Denison was really into drinking. I lost at flip-cup, and got way overly drunk, and spent the last few hours of the night (late, after the party had left) praying and vomiting into a trash can while Haley mopped up my puke from the white carpet. I rocked back and forth sputtering: Oh, Jesus, oh my Lord Jesus, oh please rescue me Jesus, pity me Jesus, Jesus save me, oh Jesus.

I apologized profusely to Haley the next morning. She was wonderfully forgiving, saying only, “Welcome to Denison.” Hard drinking was a point of pride for them, connoting strength and toughness. My sickness made Haley and her peers feel proud, validated. I offered to buy her breakfast to make up for my mess, and she refused, leaving me unredeemed. The roommates were still asleep, and without a plan for the day, Alex and I groggily entertained ourselves with the kitten.

It was an adorable kitten. We dangled a balloon ribbon for it to play with. It jumped and rolled and chased and had fun. I could feel my stress and embarrassment lifting away. I made a loop at the end of a ribbon, the kind that a parent uses to tie a balloon to a child’s finger, and looped it around the kitten’s paw. The paw rose into a floating salute, and for a little while the kitten tugged at the ribbon, bouncing and playful, and then its eyes followed the ribbon up to the balloon above, and the kitten spooked. It yowled loud, screamed, as though the balloon were a Portuguese man-o-war that had ensnared it, and it shot behind the couch, trailing the reluctant balloon.

The length of ribbon was shorter than the length of the couch, and the width of the balloon was greater than the space between the couch and the wall. So, when the kitten ran behind the couch, the balloon got wedged between the couch and the wall, and the cat was stuck, running with three legs as the other was pulled taut, struggling against the snare of ribbon. Of course, we couldn’t see any of this. It happened very fast. We only heard the fwump of the balloon as it stuck, and the terrible inhuman vowel sounds muffled through upholstery, and Haley shouting what the fuck is happening! I acted quickly, threw the couch back from the wall, grabbed the kitten, quivering, and removed the ribbon while it fought me.

In its panic, the kitten had shit itself. There was a long, graceful smear of cat shit along the wall, and splattered across the carpet. The roommates were out of bed and looking at me, stunned. I explained that it was an accident, and that I was sorry. The kitten was scratching me as I tried to soothe it. Alex claimed responsibility too, and apologized. The cat was unharmed. The couch was tipped over. The balloon nestled among the others on the ceiling. Everything was silent and still, and I didn’t know what to do or what to say. Kitten shit dripped along the molding.

Haley said, “Okay. Now you can buy me breakfast.”