I'm not sure why this comes to
mind. I'm sure I've done worse things. But whenever I try to decide on the single cruelest
thing I've ever done, I always feel worst about the time when, as a
kid, I was standing on a
dock on a
pond and my
cat, Elliot, walked up to me. He rubbed up against my
leg and purred happily. I bent down and scratched his
head, stroked his
fur, then picked him up and -- just because
I thought it would be amusing -- threw him into the pond. He didn't realize what had happened at first, and then he understood what I had done, and he writhed in the
air, tried to grasp
something, and then fell into the
water. He surfaced after a short time and swam to the shore, cold, soaked, and shivering. As soon as he had shaken the water off and licked himself, he came right back to me and rubbed up against my leg again, purring.
I burst into tears.