Sammy the Cartoon Cat

I buried a large orange tabby in April. It was not Sammy. It helped me to think that it was Sammy since we could not bury him. A neighbor found the orange cat dead in his still-blooming forsythia. There was dried blood on the cat’s nose and mouth; my neighbor thought a car had hit the cat and it crawled in the bushes to die. There were no signs of his being feral or stray. All I could guess is that a large orange tabby had vanished from some family’s life.

Sammy was a semi-feral cat who came to us four years ago. The little orange guy was scrawny and scared, but mostly hungry. Babs fed him half and half. At first, he lapped the semi-cream so anxiously that much of it dotted his face and wet the ground around his bowl. He lost the chary, mean look of a stray and before long and became a round, happy fellow. He had muscular shoulders and looked a little bow-legged. When we called him for dinner, he trotted down the road on front paws that seemed curled, like Popeye’s fists. It is why we called him the cartoon cat. He was part of our life for seven months.

One cold day he went out and never came back.

FOUND A CAT

One, large, orange tabby on XXXX Road. We are sorry to tell you he is dead. It looks as if he had been hit by a car and was able to walk into a neighbor’s bushes. He looked like a well-cared for pet.

We carefully wrapped him in a clean blanket and buried him in a quiet spot on our property. If you think this was your cat, please feel free to call us at XXX-XXX-XXXX.

This is what I posted the old fashioned way, on the local supermarket bulletin board. Someone took down the sign, wrote the following, and moved my note to another part of the board.

Yes People drive way to fast on XXXX You know who you are This time a cat next time what Please use you heads!! [sic the whole note]

Nora and Paul had their weekend home in the upstate forest where I live. They retired there in the mid-1990s. Paul was an engaging, wry man who could twist an irony from nearly any casual conversation and played with words as delightfully as anyone I have ever known. Nora edited a book on the local flora and fauna of the area, had a sharp intellect and took great care of her husband, especially after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, a few years after we met them eight years ago. Nora was masterful in covering her husband’s lapses. Not until we visited Paul in the hospital, after the accident, was the disease clearly evident.

There are no speed signs posted on the forest road. The road is narrow, and even if the state speed limit is legally 55, going that fast down the road is risky business.

One part of the road has a deep dip. It is impossible to see a vehicle coming until it is nearly on top of you. Nora wanted Paul to keep up his driving skills in case something happened to her. They chose to turn around at the bottom of the dip. A hunter’s cabin is there; its parking space is not an ideal place to turn.

From the other direction came another vehicle. I do not know if it was traveling fast enough to break the “official” speed limit. It left long and dark skid marks that ended in broken glass and plastic by the time I surveyed the scene.

Nora and Paul’s car was turned so the passenger side faced the vehicle when it hit them. Paul was nearly unscathed. Nora had broken ribs, a pierced lung, horrible bruises on her face and upper body. She needed a machine to help her breath. The doctors did a tracheotomy. Paul was on a separate floor from the IC unit. His Alzheimer’s was worse. He spoke to us as if it was still WWII and he was just off the bomber on which he served. When they left the hospital, Nora and Paul went to different nursing facilities. One place could not manage their separate needs. Their house was sold and we lost touch with them.

It was a bad place to turn by a driver who should not have been behind the wheel under any circumstances and they were hit by a car going “to” fast.

I took the FOUND A CAT sign down after I saw the scrawled comment. I did not want its writer’s anger to make the situation worse than what it was. I had taken a dead cat from my neighbor’s bushes and buried it. That is all.