On Parenting...And Dead Cats

Now, I realize that mothers have a lot more they have to deal with, what with the pushing a baby out of their vagoo and having it latch onto a nipple for the next twelve months. The baby, not the vagoo. I hope. But there's some unpleasant shit that fathers have to do, too.

The care and handling of dead kittens is one of these things.

In a fine tradition going back to at least my dad, I had to take care of the dead kittens on Saturday. Unlike my father, however, who told me that he had buried my cat Katie--despite the fact that I watched him throw her carcass into the garbage can and mutter something about the unpleasantness of cats--I followed through and buried the kittens on Saturday morning.

Backstory time! You see, my first real cat was a gray kitten my mom grabbed at her hairdresser's place. Her hairdresser at the time lived on a farm and so she, naturally, had an army of cats plaguing the premises. My mom figured the hairdresser wouldn't miss one little kitten, so she brought her home for me. I had just read a story with a character named "Katie the Kat" (or some such nonsense) and so I named my new kitten (who, fortunately, was a girl) for Katie the Kat. I was all of about 7 at the time, maybe even younger.

Two weekends later, we went away for the weekend to go to The Lake, as we did almost every weekend. When we came home, we found Katie's lifeless body lying in the driveway where she had been mauled by the dog up the street. That's when I saw the unpleasant and unceremonious disposal of my cat's body, though I was told--on three separate occasions--that she was buried behind the garage, under the cherry tree and out by the hedge.

Incidentally, that same dog mauled my next cat, Fluffy, though she lived. I hated that fucking dog, but since my mom wouldn't let me have a BB gun, its reign of terror continued for many years. My hatred had waned just enough by the time I had a .22 that its life was spared. Besides, I lived inside the city limits and, if I've learned anything, it's that the local constabulary frowns of shooting rifles in the middle of the street. Fucking dog.

Anyway, Saturday morning should have been a lovely morning, with a cloudless sky, warm sunshine, and the twittering of birds going about their pleasant, avian lives. But, with a growing sense of dread, I knew that I had to take care of the dead kittens. Just so you know, I have a minor in biology, so I'm well familiar with the handling of dead animals. When Peachigo finally died Friday night around midnight, I carefully took her limp little body and laid it next to her sister. I then stood over the two and stared at them, trying to compose myself, before returning inside.

Apparently, something changed between midnight Friday night and 10:00 Saturday morning, and that change would be "rigor mortis". I guess I was fine with dealing with her dead body when it was limp, but when I went to put Peachigo into the shoebox I had picked out for her, I couldn't handle touching her stiff form. So, I took the towel in which they were both placed and I carefully put it into the shoebox coffin. I put the lid on the box and taped it shut, because, honestly, I didn't need any zombie kittehs coming after my brains--and catnip--and took the coffin out to the hole I had dug to serve as their final resting place.

Let me tell you something else: it's a lot easier to dig a grave than it is to fill one in. When you're digging the grave, your mind is set on the task, of slashing through the spiderweb of roots that are criss-crossing the soil in which you're digging, of picking around the rocks in the way, and on making sure that the hole is deep enough so that scavengers won't smell the dead kittens and dig them up, only to have their half-eaten remains be left in the middle of the backyard where the children and/or your wife may find them at a later date. Honestly, I was stressed enough over taking care of the funeral arrangements for the dead strays, I didn't need to deal with the psychic scarring that THAT particular scenario would leave.

But filling in the grave? It's easier physically, but mentally, it's a whole different ballgame. It was the final admission that they were dead, that they weren't going to spring up to life and mew "You've been punk'd, sucker!" The cats were dead, and this was good-bye. That's not an easy thing to get through, even if they weren't your cats initially and you only had them for four days. Sure, it provided closure, but that didn't make it easier.

So, the kittehs have been buried, as lovingly as possible, and their final resting spot marked with a stone, underneath one of our dogwood trees...which is probably sickly ironic, I know, but it's a very shady and quiet spot in the yard.

And so the book is closed on this blog's slow conversion into a Kitteh Blog. That is, until my wife goes to the pound and adopts a half dozen orphans...