I raise my hand as if to slap his left cheek and the boy winces. A tinge of regret travels from my palm up to my headache. Both the boy’s smile and the cat simultaneously fall to the ground.
I frown, miraculously suppressing an impulse to laugh. Is my father going crazy? How come I haven’t noticed a sign although we are living, separately, under the same roof?
Animals in the area had begun to grow hands, opposable thumbs in fact, while the rest of their bodies remained the same. They’d heard bobcats and coyotes howling off in the distance, maybe on the now mostly abandoned golf course.