Swinging a Dead Cat

     When Sarah was a school librarian, one of her most requested stories by the students was Jack the Cat. This is a true story of something that happened when Sarah was in high school. My version of the story is slightly different – not at all contradictory, merely a telling of events from Mom's point of view – and here it is officially.

     It was a December school day. For some reason that I cannot remember now, try as I might, I was taking the day off from work. Sarah had gone to school on the bus, but I was giving Amanda a ride to her middle school that morning. We were on Riverside on our way to Lawrenceville-Suwanee Road riding in the left lane.

     We both saw it – on the far left side of the road, a cat began to run across. I slowed down. But the car riding next to me in the right lane did not slow down, and the cat got hit.

Amanda gasped.

     I looked in the rear view mirror and saw the cat go bounding up the incline on the right side of the road. We heard the impact, but then I swear the cat looked okay as it ran up the little hill afterward.

     We got to school. But Amanda did not move!

     “You are upset about the cat?”

     She nodded yes.

     “You would like to go back and make sure it is okay?”

     Again a nod yes.

     “Well, you have to go to school. I'll tell you what – if I promise to go back past where we saw the cat get hit, and I look to see if it is all right, will you go into school?”

      Amanda nodded yes, and slowly she was able to open the door and exit the car and begin her school day.

     There were no qualms about my going back to the scene – I had witnessed the cat going up the little hill on the side of the road. It was okay and would be long gone by the time I would get back there for a look around. I would have kept my promise to Amanda and I would not have to deal with a wounded cat and hopefully, the cat was all right! Good deed done for the day.

     I got to the place on Riverside where the cat was hit, I turned the car around and parked.

There, on the side of the road, on the curb, not at all on the little hill next to the road, and shockingly not out of sight and out of mind, was the cat, curled up in a sleeping position, and quite dead.

     It is tough to hit a cat with a car and have it be okay afterward.

     Now what was I going to do?

     If I told Amanda later that the cat was dead but that I left it there on the road, she would be very upset with me.

     If I moved the cat, then its owners would never find it and know that it was dead – closure was important, you know.

     If I left the cat, more things might happen to it on the side of the road there. How could I just leave it like that? Yet what business did I have with someone else's dead cat?

     I walked over to the trunk of the car and I said to myself, “if there is something in the trunk that will allow me to pick up the cat with something other than my bare hands, then I will take the cat home. Otherwise, I'll leave it here and bear the consequences of Amanda's wrath afterward.

     When I opened the car trunk, there was a huge beach towel staring at me.

     It was a sign.

     Not a particularly welcome sign, but an answer nonetheless. Whoever owned the cat was never going to know what became of it. I picked up the dead cat on the side of the road with the beach towel and took it home.

     At home, I put the cat in a cardboard box and placed the box on the backyard patio.

     Sarah was the first one home that day. I told her the story of what had happened and explained that Amanda would probably want to bury the cat. When Sarah tells the story, she says that this is when she knew that she herself would be digging a hole in the backyard that day.

     As soon as Amanda walked in the house, the first thing she said was, “What about the cat, Mom?” I was half hoping that if she had forgotten all about it, I would not have to mention the cat myself. I told her the cat had died and then quickly offered Amanda the chance to bury it.

     Amanda looked into the box on the patio and christened the cat, Jack.

     The girls went to the backyard and spent the rest of the afternoon with the burial. Sarah says there were many factors involved in the difficulty of this task: it was December so the ground was harder from the cold; it was red Georgia clay in the upper level of the backyard which had not been disturbed since the beginning of time - hard red clay; there were tree roots everywhere, defying any of the tools once the hard red clay was so arduously moved.

     The shovel was not doing the trick, so Sarah surveyed the supplies in the garage and took the pick ax to the back yard. She swung with the pick ax, and Amanda used a shovel to move away whatever the ax had loosened.

     Finally there was a hole – deep enough on one side, and deep enough on another side, but right through the middle was a tree root that was not going to budge (thankfully there was not dynomite in the garage to work with!) and it was decided that with Jack's body draped over the tree root, his head and front legs would point downward into the first hole and his back legs and tail would point into the second hole! Covering him up with dirt again, there was only a slight hump where he was over the tree roots, and with branches and leaves, the entire grave was covered over and hopefully no wild animals would happen by and dig Jack up.

     The girls bowed their heads and said a brief prayer for Jack.

     We cannot find the exact spot in the backyard now where Jack was buried – so we can comfortably say he has returned to nature, and hopefully his family can find some closure in that – should they ever hear the story.

     As Sarah says so well when she tells the story, “Jack, you have lived longer in your death than we ever knew you when you were alive!”

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