I’m F*cking Tired of Watching Cats Die

By Ben D’Alessio

**This story first appeared in The Bookends Review (7/27/2022)**

Within the first ten seconds of You Won’t Be Alone, an intriguing-enough-sounding movie with Noomi Rapace concerning a witch in Macedonia, a cat is eaten alive by some creature off-screen. I didn’t find out what the creature was because I turned off the movie after listening to its little bones get pulverized in the monster’s maw.

And ya know? I’m fucking tired of watching cats die in movies.

It feels like this piece has been a long time comin’.

On-screen cat deaths are usually a punchline, a mistake, or the product of a sadist’s gruesome machination. They are the animal equivalent of the dead prostitute who is merely a stepping-stone to catching “the killer”.

In Dogtooth, a criminally sheltered teenager stabs a cat to death with a pair of garden shears because his father told him they are evil. In The Boondock Saints, a flustered ex-mobster pounds his fists on the counter, causing his pistol to fire and splatter a cat against the wall. In The Shape of Water, the amphibious humanoid eats the head off a cat whose owner has given the creature shelter in his home. In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a cat is mutilated and left in the shape of a swastika on our…