Thursday Night

The mother cat slashes the faces of the kittens as they are born and drags them into the middle of the living room before retreating to her box to pant and wait, it is her first litter. The first one Em finds is in a chair, it is only half a kitten, the lower part of the body missing...who knows where.
Em then sits in the floor with each skinny, little cat, cleaning its wounds and stroking it as it dies. She is not emotional, she is sad but detatched. She wants to be a surgeon. Later, she will watch as her father digs a hole and buries the dead kittens.