Jolene’s Cat

Troy Seate

Sensitivity has no boundaries, I suppose, especially when it comes to honoring the wishes of the dearly departed. A friend of mine, we’ll call her Sally, lost her mother, Jolene, a while back. They were extremely close and living together at the time of Jo’s passing. Sally inherited responsibility for her mom’s beloved tabby cat, Missy.

Missy became Sally’s conduit between mother and daughter. I never thought of Sally as being a few playing cards short of a full deck, but rather as an extremely sensitive person who came to love Missy as much as her mother had.

Three years of companionship were enjoyed before said cat developed kidney failure. Sally became inconsolable when there was no choice other than to allow Missy to join Mother Dearest in the great beyond. Sally’s bereavement escalated to the point of an EMT unit being summoned to the Emergency Vet Clinic to separate her from Missy’s cooling corpse. Very sad.

Sally did have my company to provide what comfort a friend might try to muster. Words of condolence seemed inappropriate while her tears flowed. Some level of shock also played a role when I finally talked her into a cup of coffee, although I believed a shot of whiskey might have been more beneficial.

She didn’t allow the facility to take possession of Missy’s remains. With a final destination unknown, I liberated a cardboard box from a neighboring grocery store large enough to hold Missy. She was a big kitty.

After some time for reflection and some composure, Sally looked over her coffee cup. “Will you help me with one of my mother’s final requests?”

What could I say? “Sure. I guess.”

“She so loved Missy, as much as she loved me,” Sally reflected. “When Momma knew the end was near, she cried about leaving Missy and me behind. But she knew I would love her cat just as much…” A pregnant pause. “I believe they should be together again.”

“Say what?”

“Please say you’ll help! I want to take Missy to the cemetery and bury her as close to Momma as possible.”

I felt a cold shiver. “Sally, it’s the dead of winter. The ground must be frozen solid. Surely you can honor your mom and Missy’s connection some simpler way.”

“No, I’ve decided. I’ve got to do this, but I don’t think I can manage it alone.”

Where is that belt of whiskey when it’s needed most? Attachment can be a ponderous weapon. Pleading eyes were enough to melt my common sense. What are friends for, I told myself, if not to plunder a gravesite under the cloak of darkness on a freezing January night surrounded by whatever spirits may not approve. At my house, we gathered shovels, hand tools, flashlights, garden gloves, and placed the haul on my backseat. Missy’s box occupied my car’s smallish trunk.

Jolene’s grave was situated along one edge of an old neighborhood cemetery in sight of a few bordering homes, but hopefully, secluded enough to carry out our nocturnal misadventure. We approached our destination after twilight. I hoped for a locked gate that might table Sally’s decision and call for at least a postponement, giving her time to reach a more sensible solution concerning human and feline spirituality.

No such luck. The gate stood open. Entering with caution, I saw no caretaker or workmen, just one couple strolling about—late mourners, I presumed. They climbed into their vehicle and passed my car, offering a dour wave. So now there were witnesses to our presence should anything go horribly wrong. Being a Karma kind of guy, I felt certain this enterprise would prove daunting. No cautionary bird was chirping, “Beware. Beware.” There was no audio at all other than the hum of traffic a few blocks away. But we were not totally alone. A half-moon peeked through scraggly cirrus clouds, its half-open eye watching in silent omniscience.

A last chance for logic to prevail didn’t come. “Are you ready?” Sally asked me.

“As I’ll ever be,” I answered.

With just enough vision left to proceed without flashlights, I carried the tools while Sally struggled with the cardboard sarcophagus. I felt like a character in a cheap horror movie, trapped into playing the part of some random teenager about to make bad decisions while unseen forces waited to taunt us for our foolishness. We trudged to Jolene’s stone. Next to it was a plot waiting for Sally’s earthly remains, someday to reunite mother and daughter with pussycat, making it a heavenly trifecta. It occurred to me that someone inside the little shack near the entryway might have closed the iron gate at full dark, meaning we would be locked inside all night. But the di had been cast, so I took one of our communal spades and attempted to sink it into the frozen tundra.

This project was not going to be a stroll through the park. We both poked and prodded the earth with shovels trying to gain purchase. In spite of the freezing temperature my labors soon created rivulets of perspiration running from my pits under my three layers of clothing. Sally worked with a will and was better at prying loosened chunks of withered grass and dirt than I. She had more incentive than I, after all.

Following minor success with the displacement of a few two-inch-deep squares of turf, it became apparent the job was going to require a down-on-your-knees-with-garden-tools slog—a freezing fingers operation.

“How deep do you want to go?” I queried.

“Far enough for Missy’s box to be a few inches below the surface so nothing will get to her.”

I blew out a white cone of frigid air and internally moaned. My sweat was cooling within. “Couldn’t we dispose of the box and just put Missy in six inches of dirt?” I wanted to say, but Sally was again hard at it, tool digging and tossing dirt with the gusto of a woman possessed. Maybe she was.

I, on the other hand, was developing a problem with my end of the operation. The blue jeans I was wearing weren’t quite suited to the rigorous on-your-knees position I’d adopted. I hadn’t worn a belt so my jeans and undies kept slipping further and further down my flat bottom with every desecrating plunge of my garden tool. I tried to hitch them up, but it impeded progress and, in the end (pun intended), the battle was lost. I was mooning the half-moon as we dug deeper, a cold draft down my crack. I was torn between freshly sweating pits and a freezing fanny, quite the sight should someone spot us from one of the houses and call 9-1-1 to report a bare-assed grave robber with female accomplice, her pants, at least, holding their own. Tempus was a wastin’.

Both time and temperature blended our act of defiance, but eventually the depth Sally sought was reached. We managed to twist and wrench the box deep enough to lay the displaced chunks of sod over it. We stomped the clods down as best we could, but the ground still looked bad. Any daylight passerby would be able to tell the area had been disturbed. We were able to find some patches of snow hidden behind the shady side of tombstones to shovel onto our dig. If it snowed again soon, then maybe…

It’ll never pass muster, I thought but didn’t say. I hitched up my jeans a final time and stepped back from the scene to allow Sally a final moment with momma, kitty, and whatever else she might want to commune with. I was thankful the deed was done and that no humans nor spectral revenants had engaged us to ask what kind of atrocity we were committing. But, come on, we weren’t grave robbers. We only reunited a cat-lover with her cat, sort of. So sue us!

After the living and the dead had their moment, Sally came along with me. The escapade had taken about two hours. Our fingers were numb, but we were unscathed otherwise. As far as I could tell, we’d escaped cleanly. She was mostly quiet during our departure but did share her thanks that I proved to be her one true ‘living’ friend through thick and thin and through freezing buns in the dead of night in this case. I refrained from repeating the “that’s what friends are for” cliché and, being a natural born worrywart, I wasn’t confident this adventure was over. I could picture someone noticing the disturbed gravesite, checking records on the next-of-kin, and showing up on Sally’s doorstep.

Two days later, it snowed again. Was the cat burial discovered? If Sally was contacted by the graveyard police, she probably wouldn’t have told me. She has since filled her home with all the stray cats that come calling, a regular cat lady some would say, but not me, for I know this was a necessary thing to fill some empty spot within. More power to her. As for me, I no longer dig holes without proper pantaloons.

On a warm summer day earlier this year, I drove to Jolene’s cemetery. A year and a half had passed since the night of the moonlight burial. Sally never asked me to return, so it was just one of those spontaneous things. If not for my auto’s AC I would have been roasting, but as I pulled within sight of Jo’s resting place, I saw something that gave me pause. A cat was perched on her tombstone. It wasn’t Missy. This was a black cat cleaning its paw. It sat awhile before leaping to the ground and going on its way.

A cool tingle ran down by backside. I smiled. For whatever reason, it made me feel good about what we had done six seasons ago. I think Jolene felt good about it too.