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April 25, 1997
I actually managed to get up at 7:00AM and get out of the house by 7:45AM. Good thing, too. It's April vacation week, so there's no pinano today but I get to spend all day with the kids. We get to pick up trash for Earth Day - that's Elizabeth's homework for vacation week.
So, I get there on the dot of 8:30 maybe even a minute or two earlier. They're not up. Everyone is slug-a-bed after a hard night's tee ball practice.
At least this isn't a teleconference with Japan...
Elizabeth invites Marissa over to play. I agree to this on the condition they let Andrea join in their little reindeer games I mean kid games. Marissa arrives with a pillowcase stuffed with Beanie Babies. The kids draw roads, hotels, houses, wildlife refuges, conservation land, and a McDonald's on the driveway with colored chalk. The McDonalds even has a drive thru so the Beanie Babies can drive up and order Happy Meals to get Teenie Beanie Babies. Elaborate adventures ensue. I am left out of this so I look up words in the Random House Unabridged Dictionary:
Despite the consumption of zillions of imaginary Happy Meals, the kids are hungry. We make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches served with pickles and slices of bologna. The kids are eating and I'm about to make a sandwich for myself - having astonished myself with my hitherto unknown ability to open pickle jars. The kids haven't quite grasped how hard it is for aunts with repetitive strange injury to open jars. In fact most people don't quite grasp that, especially the weird painter who disassembled my electric jar opener and strewed various parts about the house and refused to put it back together since it was clutter. Anyway, my hand is obviously better because I opened two pickle jars and a jelly jar with barely a twinge - an amazing show of strength.
The phone rings just as I'm spreading the peanut butter. It's Judy from across the street telling me she saw a dead cat by the side of the road just past the driveway and went to check. It looks like Skitz but she's not sure because there's another tortoise shell cat in the neighborhood. I say vague things not wanting to alarm the kids and tell her I'll check on it. I hang up. The phone rings again. It's a total stranger who lives in town and was driving by, spotted the cat on the side of the road and noted our name on the mailbox. She describes it in detail and my heart is sinking. I'm trying to give vague responses so the kids don't catch on, but they do. The caller wants to call animal control to have the body removed and I ask her not to until I've found out whether it's Skitz or not.
The kids all want to know what is going on. I say I'll go out and take a look because after all it might not be Skitz. They decide to come with me.
We meet Judy from across the street a few yards from the end of the driveway. She's putting the body in a plastic bag to protect it from scavengers.
She opens the bag.
It's Skitz.
Elizabeth and Marissa burst into tears. Andrea tells me she will not cry.
I decide I'd better call Kevin. My mind goes blank. I can't remember his work phone number. My mind is totally blank. I can't remember anything. Finally I remember he has a few speed dial numbers programmed on one of the phones. I press Aunt Claire. She gives me the number. I leave a message on his voice mail. Not the best way to handle this but what am I gonna do? I have Skitz's mortal remains in a plastic bag on the porch. I have to find out what Kevin wants to do.
He calls back, talks to the kids, makes a plan to bury Skitz in the yard tonight after supper.
Andrea says she wants to get a new cat immediately from the shelter where I work. She asks if we have any black ones with white feet so she can name it Boots.
The kids are stunned for awhile. They retreat to Elizabeth's room with Casey - daughter of Judy from across the street - and I sit on the hall stairway talking to Judy about cats and goats and the expense of goat feed. After awhile, Judy and Casey leave and the kids come back downstairs.
It's time to do the homework. We grab trash bags and not having any work gloves or plastic gloves we sheath our hands in sandwich bags. In a small area partly on Kevin's property and partly on the conservation land next door we net: a zillion cigarette butts, 3 hubcaps, six flowerpots, two bags of potting soil, 7 Dunkin Donuts coffee cups, a bag of puke, 12 beer bottles and nearly as many cans, a full bottle of Southern Comfort, several bottles of slimy green junk, a 2 liter bottle of Dr. Pepper, and a muffler - with exhaust pipe attached. And that's not counting the coffee lids, gum wrappers, cigarette packs, unrecognizable bits of plastic, and stuff I don't know the names of.
We fill 2 bags so full the kids can't lift them. I can barely lift them.
The kids are shocked that adults would throw this much junk onto conservation land. Andrea asks "Don't they care about endangered species?".
Marissa finds a garter snake next to a beer can. She screams and runs away. I tell her the snake is more scared of her than she is of it. She says she's sorry she scared it. Her Mom arrives to take her home as we're lugging the bags up to the garage to await a trip to the transfer station.
Back at the house I'm relieved to see Bertha at the back door even though I know the odds of both cats becoming road kill on the same day are slim. I let Bertha in. I let Bertha out.
Kevin returns home with pizza. We eat supper in a kind of weird tension. Andrea describes again what kind of cat she wants. I tell them we're having an adoptathon next weekend.
After supper, the kids pick a spot in the side yard. Kevin digs a hole. Bertha joins us, sniffing at the plastic bag containing Skitz's remains. Elizabeth is tearful. I hug her. I hold Bertha in my arms and she purrs. We say goodbye to Skitz. Kevin digs another smaller hole next to the Skitz one and Elizabeth plants her tree from Earth Day.
Elizabeth and Andrea imagine Skitz in heaven with Mama. Andrea says: "I've lost two people."