Donal Mahoney - They Call it Euthanasia

We took a feral cat

we'd been feeding to the vet

when it stopped eating.

It was lying on the deck

too weak to object.

The vet said tests

would cost $400

to figure out the problem.

Or we could euthanize the cat.

That would cost less.

It was up to us, he said.

I asked him if old and sick

cats and dogs were still 

euthanized with gas

and he said no.

It’s by injection now.

They don’t feel a thing.

Perhaps that will help

if the Court decides

some day to cull

the herd of old folks.

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He has had fiction and poetry published in various publications in the U.S. and elsewhere. Among them are The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Christian Science Monitor, Commonweal, The Galway Review (Ireland), Bluepepper (Australia), The Osprey Journal (Wales), Public Republic (Bulgaria), and The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey).