Tag Archives: dead cat

Another Screaming Christmas

25 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by in Sandshoe

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

 

 

 

Story by ~ and photograph of Sandshoe (with Mum and Sister)

My sister ran up the back steps and through the open kitchen door. She makes so much noise at Christmas could be all I need to say.  Christmas 2013 I told you she found out one year the turkey laid an egg?

Remember she sobbed and elucidated and screamed at Dad who was the designated executioner?

So many big words. It wouldn’t have fitted into the oven anyway like it was.

She found the cat’s tail this year.

That much of the cat was known of.

She turned and ran back out the kitchen door and down the steps. We all ran out the door and down the steps. We followed her round the house to the front fence. A bony end of a tail and some length of it was hanging from a rusty barb of fence wire where it looped through a post.

My sister wailed and wailed. She was so good at it. I felt faint.

“Dead,” she whimpered, “Cat’s dead.”

My mother and her mother too (of course, never mind my vulnerable years exposed to my ear splitting older sister’s capacity for empathy) whirled towards her. I supposed a gesture of reconciliation of life and death.

My sister screamed and sobbed, “Dead.”

Dad said (he was a scientist remember), “No reason to imagine the cat is deceased.” The ‘r’ of reason as rich as a Scotch plum pudding rolled into the spaces between us all and they were filled. We were a Christmas table scene, stock still, you know like the Wise Men and everybody standing round looking at a holy remnant of baby Jesus with their mouths open.

My sister howled.

All of us were shocked. About the tail I mean. Our two parents, two big brothers (honest they were big), and my sister and me. I was 6.

“Dad, she’s upset,” Mum said.

My sister’s howl pierced my eardrums, as uzh-u-al, memorable for sure, maybe for the neighbours. “Where’s the CAAAAT!!?

I wished she would calm down a bit.

“Leave it there,” said Dad as Mum reached forward.

Mum thought better move it. A bird would peck at it or something. What about snakes. Dad said the cat would come back to its tail. I think Dad didn’t know a lot about cats.

“Yes, yes,” screamed my sister, “Leave it alone. It’s the CAT’S!”

She stalked off across the yard and down the side yard of the house where we had run to see. I followed anyway. The others were running after my sister.

What happened next speaks to me of a post-traumatic group stress disorder pre-condition. The noise that came out of the back yard (the rest of them I was following were only rounding the rain water tank) was blood curdling. She (my sister) was standing looking at the cat on the prowl towards her in the way cats do intent on rubbing themselves on a familiar leg. What was left of the cat’s tail stuck out pretty well behind it. The end was ragged, tipsy. My sister looked terrible I’ll be the first to say.

“She’s not DEAD!”

The assertion seemed factual enough comparing the evidence and weight of probability.

I was happy. I wanted to know if the cat remembered its tail. Would it go back and find it? I got a mop handle and broom and set up an observation tent with an old blanket tied to the fence and a hessian sugar bag for a tent flap. It never.

 

 

Foodge 29 – Here’s a Toast for George

18 Wednesday Jan 2012

Posted by in Emmjay, Foodge Private Dick

≈ 21 Comments

Tags

,

Simulated George Cat

OK, it was a mistake to think that using the paddles of life was a good idea on a cat having a heart attack.

Well, it was an honest mistake.  Foodge really did think he was having a heart attack. No, I mean BEFORE Foodge applied the paddles of life.

How was the private dick to know that cats go all dramatic when they’re trying to cough up a fur ball.  It wasn’t his fault.  He was only trying to help.

“What’s that smell downstairs, dear” ?

“It’s nothing”

“It smells like something’s burning”

“I think it’s a moth in the halogen light”.

“No, I mean it really stinks – kind of like burnt fish – no wait, a seal caught crossing a hotplate”.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about”.

Descending the stair, curiosity was about to kill the attempted saviour of the cat.  “WTF !!!”  she said.

“Uuhhm, I think George is looking a bit off his Snappy Tom”.   “A BIT !!!  A BIT !! He’s fuckin’ toast.  WHAT HAPPENED ?

“Well, I noticed that he was lying there doing these little jump and jive impressions.  I thought he was having a heart attack……. and …….”  “And so you went and got the jumper leads and clamped them on his chest……. ”  ” And WHAMMER-JAMMER”  “The thing is, he didn’t start, did he ?  Nope, he zipped and zapped and ……

“Look, let’s put a positive spin on this.  No more spraying in the house !  That’s a good thing “!  You could have cut the silence with a stone axe.  We were not amused.  Well, I was secretly a little amused but thought it wise to not display such callous disregard for the sanctity of feline life.  And the impending extinction of a minor blip on the private eye radar.

Foodge thought it wise to remove the evidence from line of sight.  While it was true that George was a major pain in the arse, it was also true that he was FM’s cat for a bit over a decade and although I had never quite warmed to the way he’d bring home his mousy / ratty nocturnal safari trophies – or maybe just a kidney or the back half of a torso, it was clear to me that FM HAD warmed to George’s little peccadilloes.  Foodge used an old towel to wrap this toasty little corpse and withdrew the former George from the back verandah.  And he discretely stowed the offending electronics.

By the back fence rested a row of greenish grey plastic yard chairs, bleached by years of exposure to the scorching rays of the inner west cyberian solar system.  Foodge placed G on the middle chair and withdrew to the house to take his abuse.

It was some hours before Foodge faced the daunting task of disposing of the corpse.  There was a choice between a private burial in the yard (not advised since Kali the dog had a reputation for Austro-Sino excavations in pursuit of subterranean protein), casual laying to rest in a back lane equivalent of a Tibetan sky burial – where the roles of vultures were acted by the local council collectors, or an extended procession to the skip in the Seven Eleven car park.

But lo, as Foodge approached the row of chairs, the body was nowhere to be seen.  It was a miracle.  Foodge made customary inquiries with the Dog.  She was coolly nonchalant and acted like she had no information.  Foodge checked the back lane.  The usual refuse and one junkie shooting up – but no George.  Foodge managed only a cursory peek into the Seven Eleven skip.  After all, it was not a useful addition to a private dick’s CV to be seen scouting for accommodation before dusk.

Curious.  Foodge pictured an exchange with the local vet.  “After I attached the jumper leads …… “.  No, that wasn’t going to work.  There was only one option.  To go back and try to appease the by now explosive FM.

“I’m very sorry, Aunty FM”.  “I know you are, dear.”  FM had resigned herself to the extinction of the in-house sprayer and was warming to the notion that no more of her curtains would spend more time in the dry cleaners than on the lounge room curtain rods.  There was some other small compensation – the accident had also put an end to the payments FM and Emmjay made on the Vet’s yacht.

One day passed.

As was his wont, Foodge rose at the crack of a quarter past ten and went straight to the front porch to collect his copy of Private Dick Daily, resplendent as usual on the Welcome mat.  “Meow” said the murraya in the concrete urn by the fence.

“It’s a miracle”, shouted Foodge.  Aunty FM, Aunty FM, it’s George !  I guess he’s down to 8 lives !  It’s George !  Back from the dead.  Foodge was convinced that George had some celestial recuperative experience and that there would be pilgrims any minute to witness the miracle of the Inner West.

George was non-plussed.  He jumped out of the concrete urn, turned on his heel, strolled across the hearth, down the hall, up to the drapes, reversed and raised his tail, did the shimmy and headed for the kitchen, secure in his remarkable territory and certain of a hearty breakfast of hard and wet  foods.