The first thing I touched this morning was a dead cat. Ralph.
Ralph fell off the ledge today from the 25th floor.
At 5:30 am I woke up to people talking loudly. I asked them to talk in the other room.
I didn’t know they were talking about Ralph. I got up, went to the bathroom. Chad, sitting at his computer, in the faint sunrise light, points to Ralph. “The cat fell, he’s dead.”
Honestly, I thought he was messing with me. It was 5:30 am, afterall. I just barely knew where I was.
No one said, “Hey, we are talking loudly because we just brought our dead cat upstairs.” Ralph appeared to be stretched out, snoozing contentedly.
At 9:00am I see the cat looks, eerily, exactly the same. So I reach down to stroke him and the early morning snippets come back to me. I say, “Hey something is wrong with Ralph.”
Shaun say, “Yes, Yes we told you that.”
Oh Lord. I feel like a jerk.
Well, he did fall. I came home at 1:30pm from the Pride Festival. Chad is trying to process that he lost his favorite cat. Ralph is still in the living room
It was clearly time to act.
I call two emergency vets. Chad wants Ralph buried in his birthplace-Georgia.
Problematic. The vets insist on cremation. This is not going to happen.
I decide to call a funeral home.
I ask the nice lady, “So, how do you handle a body? Like, if your Aunt dies while you are on vacation, how do you get her home? Our pet died and we want to ship it back home.”
She explains it must be embalmed and to call a taxidermist. She also emphasized that toxicity and decomposition are factors we should handle immediately. I give Chad the options I’ve come up with so far.
So, we head out to buy a cooler and some dry ice. Ralph is now on his way to the great outdoors.
From the Atlantic to the Pacific-Ralph, may mice everywhere be yours for the catching and Ralph-may you also have eternal catnip…..