This is a true story. I got an unusual call at work from Chris
the other day. She asked me pointblank if I had run over "Red Fred" that
morning.
Red Fred is one of the several feral cats that lurk around our premises. I
professed my innocence in the strongest possible terms -- or at least, I
claimed I hadn't thought I'd run over anyone that morning. To be utterly
frank, my powers of perception are at their minimum at that particular time of
day…
To be slightly more than utterly frank, I'd say that these feral cats are
getting to be something of a nuisance. We already have a dozen or so non-feral
housecats running amok around here - and most of them won't have anything to
do with me. It's not like I'm carrying a roaring chainsaw around with me, to
frighten them away. They simply just don't like me or trust me, period. Some
of the ferals come into the house through the pet door and poke around at
night when the dogs are out. But, though welcome, they're just too wild to
want to plop their butts down permanently and stake out their claim to any of
our interior square footage.
Chris buys catfood in magnum quantities, and lots of it gets put outside for
the ferals to eat - if they can get it before the raccoons, possums, coyotes,
wildcats, and other roaming varmints out there can scoop it up first. She
literally panders to her feral cats, carefully placing bowls of Half 'n Half
and wet food as if our front porch were a sacred altar to Bast. I think in a
previous life she must've been a priestess in one of those ancient, musty,
cat-urine-smelling Egyptian temples…
The thing is, Red Fred is stone deaf. That makes me sort of sympathetic to his
particular cause. If you imagine for a moment what deafness means to an animal
-- that is one huge disadvantage. I don't see how the poor SOB can even go to
sleep, knowing what he might wake up to. Like a lot of our cats, he prefers
dozing in the relative safety of the low space under our cars. Fortunately, he
likes Chris's vehicle better than my old pickup. She sometimes has to throw a
pebble at him to wake him up when she wants to go somewhere. Now that's a
helluva note, to have to be so cautious.
So it turns out that she found old Red Fred dead, laying up against our garage
door, obviously runover. On the phone, I asked her what she did about it -
secretly hoping to hear that she took care of "planting" him, rather than
leaving that distasteful (and seemingly endlessly repeating) chore to me.
Bless her soul, she said she did - bursitis and all. Since I successfully
defended my innocence, she put the blame onto our Mailcarrier. (That lady
comes roaring down our driveway every day like a photon late for a snapshot.)
So sad, so sad, I said. But it was only a matter of time, given Red's physical
disadvantage. Later that evening there was a tear or two of regret and remorse
- and Chris was already composing a note to the aforementioned Mailcarrier
that could only be summarized in 3 words: "Rot in Hell". I had to talk her out
of putting it in the mailbox…
In my mind, one night of grieving is plenty for most of the "sparks of life"
around here. But I have to say that the feeling of loss in this case lasted
for a couple of days longer. As the pall of smoke from a snuffed candle hangs
around for awhile, so did Red's demise linger. Sitting at work on the third
day after, I got another call from Chris. "Red Fred's back", she said. "What
the ****!", I replied.
Red Fred returned, and he continues to lap his damned Half 'n Half out of the
bowl on our front porch to this day, as stone deaf as ever. I keep wondering
what's in that mounded grave by the driveway. I sometimes feel a compulsion to
dig it up to see if a dead cat is really in there. Perhaps Chris just imagined
the whole scenario? More likely, there was another orange-and-white cat that
looked just like him, who happened to wander by that fateful day. Or perhaps
Red had an extra life left to donate to Bast.
In any case, for a variety of reasons, I really just don't want to know…
