There are some people in my life who are of the mindset that I ask far too many crying people what is wrong. They have said that this habit of interacting with strangers involving strange circumstances will be my eventual downfall and that I will never learn my lesson. (However, I think the “sex trafficking incident” in Toledo may have scared me straight.) Tonight, I successfully proved all of those people wrong. The problem with the story I’m about to tell you is that it is sad, disturbing, and I’m not really sure which details to share first. I guess I will just start with what most of you already know, which is that I have a lot of random cats who like to hang out in my yard. These cats always seem to come from the house behind me. I have never seen the owners of this house, but I constantly hear an electric saw and hammering coming from their side of the fence, even though I have NEVER seen anything being built or repaired in the three years that I have lived here.
Back to the point. Today I took some trash to the curb and literally gasped when I saw a very dead cat lying just on the other side of the curb. He had the same markings as my Ducky and it took my brain a few seconds to realize that I had just walked past my Ducky on the way out of my house to take out the trash, so this poor soul obviously wasn’t my Ducky. Once I accepted that it was not my Ducky I was still left with a few problems to resolve. One, I had a feeling (though no actual knowledge) that this cat may belong to the people behind me. Two, if it was their cat shouldn’t “someone” tell them that their cat had died? Three, if people let their cats out during the day, do they expect to know if something happens to said cats? Four, it was 85 degrees here today and a dead cat in the street is bad news for everybody. Five, how do you tell a complete stranger that a cat, which may or may not belong to them, is dead?
I used my “phone a friend” option to call my sister, L., and ask her opinion. She thought it was best to just dispose of the cat and move on with my life. I was about to, and then I got in my car and drove around the block. I pulled up in front of the house behind me and immediately thought, “Yeah, I’m probably not getting out of my car.” There were four totally beat up vehicles parked in the driveway. There was an enclosed front porch which is awkward because, would I knock on the door to the front porch, or walk in and knock on the actual front door? That question became irrelevant when I realized that every square inch of the porch, from floor to ceiling, was completely covered with random crap. So! Much! Stuff! I am not exaggerating when I say that you will likely see this house one day…. on an episode of Hoarders. I decided that, if I did knock on either door, I would probably never be heard from again and the dead cat would have just been a ploy to kidnap me.
I returned home and waited for the sun to set before I went about the business of disposing of the poor departed feline. When I finally went outside I took an empty pizza box, a garbage bag, and some rubber yard gloves with me. I was pleased to see that the street was empty of onlookers and the passers-by in cars wouldn’t pay me much attention. ****The following details may be disturbing to some readers, so feel free to stop reading now.**** My idea was to shimmy the cat on to the pizza box and just put it all in the trash bag. That was my idea. That is not what actually happened. I started to shimmy the box under the cat and promptly went into a gagging fit. I had not accounted for the fact that rigor mortis had set in and that this was, apparently, the best fed street cat and weighed in close to 15 pounds. My one pizza box coupled with my gagging was not going to get the job done. So I went back inside and found another piece of heavier cardboard to use. I returned to the task at hand with the previous gastrointestinal threat of vomiting still looming close on the horizon and slung a string of expletives in to the night air. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry that this happened to you, but please just get in the fucking bag!” *Huet, huet!!* “Holy hell! Why are you so heavy??!! Please just work with me here!” *More gagging sounds* At this point I stood upright and realized that a neighbor a few doors down was taking out his trash and had become interested in whatever it was that I was doing. Instead of going back inside, he actually sat down on his stoop to watch the rest of the show.
I re positioned myself so that I could wiggle the cardboard from both sides, like they do with the spatula things at a hibachi grill when they are moving your food from the grill to your plate. As I was completely engrossed in what I was doing, I did not hear the shirtless gentleman who was running down the sidewalk until he was directly behind me. As soon as I noticed him, I let out an unintentional yelp, suspiciously dropped the bag I was holding that now had a dead cat halfway inside it, and spun around. He appeared to be just as startled as I was and apologized for frightening me. I laughed it off and told him that it was no problem and secretly hoped that he didn’t know what I was attempting to do. I quickly finished with this ridiculous endeavor, tied the bag as quickly as I could, ignored the fact that part of his tail was coming out of the top of the bag, and ran inside to forget that any of this ever happened.
If I had any doubts before about being the “Crazy Neighborhood Cat Lady”, all of those doubts dissolved after this experience. Anyone who was watching had to have though that I was a total nut job. Tonight I will say a prayer for the kitty and hope that I don’t get ticketed or arrested for disposing of a dead animal in my trash.
atlaslaughing: Thoughts From Inside the Head of Erin Elise 