You Can't Grieve the Undead

Some of you may remember my article The Quaint and the Undead.  It was a story about Gus, our outdoor cat.

The result of a collision with a car before I ever came into the picture, he's the one-eyed, so badly slack-jawed that he can't close his mouth or groom himself which results in mats that resemble extra limbs and tails, drooling, schizophrenic cat that won't let us touch him or come inside horror of an animal that lived on our patio.  Whew.  That was a keyboardful.

As dreadful as his appearance was, he was still our cat.  We've spent thousands on him.  We've done as much for him as any loving pet owners could be expected to do.  So now you'll understand how awful I felt today when the call came in.

I was walking into an Eat 'N' Park with my parents after having taken them to the doctor and to the grocery store.  Kevin called to tell me that he was on his way home from work.  A neighbor had called him because Gus had been hit by a car.  After a positive ID from neighbors that this was truly our cat, they took him to the vet.  Kevin called the vet and was told there was major head trauma.  He gave the order for euthanasia.  He was on his way to pick up the remains and would be burying him in a back area of our yard reserved for pets.  Naturally, I cried.

I didn't want to eat lunch, but we were there.  There was nothing I could do, being forty miles away.  The meal dragged.  I was irritable because all I wanted to do was go home and be there with Kevin.  God.  Poor Gus.  I talked about him throughout the next hour.

I was pretty sure I knew who hit him.  Our next door neighbor, Bobbie, had gone on at length to me a couple of days before about how much she hated this cat.  She called him a menace because he sometimes sat in her bushes.  I had bit my tongue during her diatribe, knowing she was just an ignorant old woman who couldn't see that maybe we might have some objections to the peeling paint on her house, the wooden snowmen nailed to the outside, the overgrown gardens, the three junk vehicles in her yard or the howling beagles.  I knew she'd hit Gus.  I knew she did it on purpose.  I blamed everything, including global warming on her.  I was ready to knock her down and beat her senseless when I got home.

In the meantime, Kevin had gone to the vet's to pick up the carcass.  They had put him in a nice, little box.  They included a putty-like print of his paw that had a lock of his fur encased in some kind of clear, plastic bauble.  He saw the fur and knew it was Gus.  These fur chunks have poplulated our patio for many years, now.  Unmistakable.  He didn't need to see the cat.  With a feeling of inevitability, he paid for the service and brought Gus home to bury.

So, when he pulled into the driveway and saw Gus waiting for lunch by the back door, he was pretty shocked.  Not a ghost.  The real Gus.  He called me as we were getting ready to leave the restaurant.  My cheeks were tear-streaked.  What my parents heard was this:

"What?!  (pause)  It wasn't Gus?!?  (pause)  So, you paid to have someone else's cat put to sleep?  (pause)  You brought a strange, dead cat home?"

At this point, my parents lost it.  They had felt badly for me for the past hour as I cried and told Gus stories and now were able to laugh hysterically with me in my relief.  Dad slapped the table and threw his head down on it.  Mom howled and crept into the corner of the booth while holding her sides.  Now, I was wiping tears of relief and joy from my eyes.

Kevin opened the box while on the phone with me to confirm he wasn't hallucinating.  Nope.  It wasn't Gus.  He could see why the mistake was made, but this was a cat with which he was totally unfamiliar.

He called the vet who promptly lost it, also.  They told him to bring the cat back in case someone was looking for it, which he did.  They gave him a refund.

Gus ate Fancy Feast tonight.