Death of a Housecat

There was this woman I was trying to sleep with about six years ago. I was working as a maitre d’ at a downtown San Francisco hotel restaurant and she was one of our booziest regulars. She would come in and get hammered on martinis on a nightly basis. She was a pretty good looking woman, tall, a narrow body and a pretty face. When she walked across a room her movement was lithe and dignified, except when she was shitfaced. And she was fun as well as impeccably damaged. So I was into her. After a while, she let me take her out a few times, and I got very close but never closed the deal. It was fairly apparent that she was looking for a sugar daddy. I’ve always been a failure in that department.

But even though we never slept together, I really did like her and considered her at least a casual friend. I think she felt the same way. Anyway, our story begins with a distressed phone call she made to me one morning. It was the penultimate time I would speak to her. At first, I couldn’t make out what she was saying through her bursting sobs and tears. But after a while, she calmed down enough so that I could at least understand her words.

“I need you to come over and help me.”
“What’s going on,” I asked, concerned.
“My cat’s dead and I don’t know what to do.”
“Jesus,” I sighed, knowing as an animal lover just how traumatizing the death of a pet can be. “I’ll be right over.”

I got in my car – a barely running 1968 Volkswagen bus – and trekked over to her place. When I got there and she let me in sure enough, there was a smallish tabby lying on the bed, stiff as a board. I looked at the girl, mascara smeared all over her face and said, “Go clean yourself up. I’ll take care of this.”

There was a shoebox in the corner of her bedroom. I dumped the shoes out of the box and placed the cat, which barely fit, inside. I then covered the animal with newspaper. Soon, my friend had returned. I handed her the box as we were leaving the building and heading toward the jalopy.

“What’s this?” she queried.
“C’mon, what do you think it is?”
“Oh.”

We departed. Just as the car hit the road, she opened the box and removed the dead cat. She cradled it in her arms and stroked its head; her lips touched its inanimate nose repeatedly and lovingly. You could almost hear the thing purring from beyond. She seemed inconsolable so we didn’t say much to one another. But, as it was about eleven o’clock a.m. and I hadn’t been awake for long, at some point in the journey I pulled over at a local café for a cup of coffee. I asked her if she wanted anything. “A large half-caf latte with three Splendas,” she replied without missing a beat in the mourning process.

On the road again and becoming more caffeinated and awake, she expressed her gratitude for my assistance. I felt a rush of emotion for this woman whom I was able to rescue and immediately realized that her desperate situation and neediness turned me on immensely. One of my sicknesses, I guess.

We were well inside Golden Gate Park, directly across the street from the buffaloes when I pulled over. I instructed her to put kitty back in the box and follow me. We entered a heavily treed area far away from the road or any trails. I located a flat piece of wood of decent size and began digging the shallow grave. Of course I knew that it was only a matter of time before the raccoons got to the carcass, but I figured she wouldn’t be thinking about that. The hole was about a foot and a half deep. I turned to her and said, “It’s time.” She placed the box in the ground and I covered it up as best I could, patting down the earth and covering it with leaves and twigs for concealment.

“Do you want to say anything?” I asked.
She stared down at the ground. “You were a good friend when things were bad and I’m going to miss you very much.” Tears streamed down her face. “I’ll always remember you and I hope you are in a better place.”
“That was very nice,” I said. “I think it’s time we leave, though. This burial wasn’t exactly legal.”
Driving back to her apartment, her mood cleared up quite a bit. It was as if putting the cat in the ground had given her some kind of closure. She stared out the window and mused:

“It was for the best.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was suffering so much. It was the right thing to do.”
“I don’t understand.”
“My kitty had cancer and was in pain,” she replied offhandedly, “he was suffering so much. Putting him down was the right thing to do.”
“Putting him down? What the hell?”
“Well, I gave him one of my oxycontin pills and held his little mouth shut until he swallowed it. He was dead within half an hour.”

I was outwardly stoic, but inside it was all turmoil. How could she, I wondered? Euthanasia was one thing, but offing a pet by yourself is something else all together. Who knew if she had even visited a veterinarian to determine if the cat had cancer or not? As far as I knew, she had felt a benign lump and diagnosed the poor thing herself. Or maybe the cat had just become a burden and she created a fiction in her mind. Maybe she was a black widow waiting, training for eventual human prey. I felt like screaming. I felt like laughing out loud at the absurdity of it all. But I was still interested in sleeping with her, so I kept my mouth shut.