A Stolen Memory
A story from the past. My friend had a cat that she and her young brother both loved, but it was a lazy cat. Often their dad would come home from work and see the cat lying there lazily on the tiled kitchen floor and nudge it with his foot, "Lazy cat!" and the cat would lazilly ignore him and return to laziness.
One day, as little girl and brother are sitting on the kitchen floor playing, Dad returns home and does as is the usual, nudges the cat, BUT! This time, the cat just sails across the tiles over to the wee ones, offering no resistance to his gentle poke. GASP! Mother and father realize the cat is dead, but rather than tell the wee ones the truth, they hide the fact and put kitty in the freezer.
Yes, in the freezer.
So, somehow, years pass. Maybe they forgot about it, maybe mom just never found the heart to tell the kids what had happened, but as all wee ones do, they got older, and of course realized what was up. Now, you know how these things go in the home, there's some horrid task that must be done but no one wants to be the one to do it, so it just gets left. And so kitty stays on ice for years and years.
Until one Thanksgiving.
Girl's Brother, now a strapping young man, and Brother's friend decide it's gone on too long. They pull kitty out of the freezer and take it outside. They dig a little hole in the backyard, which is no easy task, because our story takes place in the Midwest, and this time of year the ground is getting hard and cold. They toss kitty down and...
Kitty doesn't fit.
So what does Brother's friend do? He doesn't dig a bigger hole, no, that's too much work.
He snaps kitty in half, like King Solomon on crack, and tosses the not-so-symmetrical halves into the hole.
Deed done. Story over.
One day, as little girl and brother are sitting on the kitchen floor playing, Dad returns home and does as is the usual, nudges the cat, BUT! This time, the cat just sails across the tiles over to the wee ones, offering no resistance to his gentle poke. GASP! Mother and father realize the cat is dead, but rather than tell the wee ones the truth, they hide the fact and put kitty in the freezer.
Yes, in the freezer.
So, somehow, years pass. Maybe they forgot about it, maybe mom just never found the heart to tell the kids what had happened, but as all wee ones do, they got older, and of course realized what was up. Now, you know how these things go in the home, there's some horrid task that must be done but no one wants to be the one to do it, so it just gets left. And so kitty stays on ice for years and years.
Until one Thanksgiving.
Girl's Brother, now a strapping young man, and Brother's friend decide it's gone on too long. They pull kitty out of the freezer and take it outside. They dig a little hole in the backyard, which is no easy task, because our story takes place in the Midwest, and this time of year the ground is getting hard and cold. They toss kitty down and...
Kitty doesn't fit.
So what does Brother's friend do? He doesn't dig a bigger hole, no, that's too much work.
He snaps kitty in half, like King Solomon on crack, and tosses the not-so-symmetrical halves into the hole.
Deed done. Story over.