RIP, cat

Nice kitty

The other day a man in overalls carrying a box into the school building I had just left paused a moment to tell me that there was a dead cat in the garden. He nodded towards a concrete fountain thing in the flower bed beside us and told me the cat was just behind it. “It’s going to stink up the place”, he said. “Somebody better take it away”.  He was still talking as I went to have a look and when I saw it I felt a sharp pain in my chest. It was the same black cat that was often around the school yard. A beautiful sleek creature that would turn onto its back when you approached, purring furiously if it succeeded in soliciting a cuddle. Just yesterday I had stroked the soft fur and its stomach. I had grown very fond of it. Now it was dead. It lay stretched out as if it was asleep except its eyes were open.

A disproportionate sense of grief welled up in me. “What happened?” I asked but the man just shrugged his shoulders. I walked back to my classroom, closed the door and put my face in my hands. It would have been a comfort to cry, but I haven’t so much as shed a tear in years. My heart doesn’t respond to much, but I was really sad about the cat. The thought of one of the cleaners picking it up by the tail and sticking into a refuse bag was just too awful to bear.

I took the newspaper on my desk and went to the store room to get a spade. Then I walked around the school looking for a suitable place to bury the cat - somewhere quiet, under a tree. When I found the kind of place I had in mind I began digging a hole, half a metre deep through roots and stones that left me sweating and out of breath. I wrapped the cat neatly in newspaper and laid it down in the hole in what would have been a comfortable position if it were alive and filled the hole, patting down the soil at the end.

After that I put the tools back in the shed, cleaned up and went back to my classroom. I felt strangely comforted after burying the cat. Nature had taken its course and the cycle of life went on. I made a cup of tea and thought about how people must take a similar comfort in being able to bury their loved ones and how it really seems that they are able to rest in peace thereafter. Cremation might be a practical thing to do but it doesn’t provide the same emotional comfort or sense of closure for those left behind, at least not for me.

The next day I was at my computer when a colleague told me she had just seen a black cat walking about the school. “Come have a look” she said, “It looks just like that friendly one”. I followed her outside and spotted a black cat identical to the one that was now buried under a tree around the corner. As I stuck my hand out it rolled onto its back and when I picked it up and it began purring, rubbing its head against my chin.  It was the very cat I was so fond of!

A pang sprang up in my chest again and I felt like crying. I was embarrassingly overwhelmed with relief and confusion to be holding something warm and alive that I thought was gone. My colleague laughed about the needless effort I had taken to bury a different cat, but I am glad that I did it anyway. I still feel comforted knowing that it is lying in the earth and not in a dumpster somewhere.