My quiet, perfect Sunday morning is interrupted by an unexpected knock on the door, which I ignore. Sunday mornings are sacred to me; perhaps it’s my Catholic upbringing, observing years of rituals on Sundays. However, these days, instead of spending Sunday mornings munching on communion wafers and contemplating the “sacred mysteries”, you’re more likely to find me munching on “migas” and trying to figure out the mystery of the Sunday crossword puzzle.
Hmmm, a three letter word for ‘a person of habit’”, I am close to an answer when my visitor becomes even more insistent and knocks even louder and more urgently.
I leave my crossword to look out the peephole in the front door and I see a twentysomething slender woman in sunglasses and shorts, nervously milling around my front porch. She’s dressed too casual to be Mormon and looks too rational to be a Jehovah’s Witness. So, I open the door and she immediately asks, “Hi, I hate to bother you, but do you know whose cat that is?” and she points to a black and white pile of fur in the middle of the road in front of my house.” “No”, I say, “I don’t know”.
At this point, I’m presented with two options: I can return to the comfort of my Sunday crossword or I can choose to inject myself in this unfolding tragedy. However, I like to think of myself as good, caring and involved neighbor. During the last electrical outage, wasn’t it me who stumbled in the dark, going door to door to my surrounding neighbors to ask, “Is everyone okay? Can I get you a candle? ” And isn’t it me who is usually the first to call 9-1-1 once a noisy party in our block really gets going past two a.m? However, my partner Andy would describe my neighborly role as a cross between a Nazi and Gladys Kravitz. He is hidden from our visitor behind the door, currently mouthing “close the door” to me, while shaking his head.
But I am unable to resist and I am out my front door and I follow my overly concerned neighbor to the pile of fur in the middle of the road.
We stare at the small, motionless body in street. There is no blood, no gore, just a cat lying in the middle of the road. It’s as if the cat suddenly grew tired in the middle of crossing the street and decided to take a nap.
“Is it dead?” it’s a stupid question, but I have to ask.
“It’s not breathing,” she answers.
Well, thank goodness f
or that, I think. Not that I wish the cat dead, but if we had found the animal badly injured or close to death, there would have been difficult and hasty decisions to be made regarding transportation to a vet or animal hospital and payment for treatment. Instead, the cat was thoughtful and considerate enough to die quickly.
“There’s a collar but it doesn’t have a tag”, the overly concerned neighbor offers, “Who do you think it belongs to?”
I look around the surrounding houses and try to remember who owns or rather owned a cat: Linda next door has a cat, but I can’t remember what it looked like. Across the street, Maria also owns a cat.
The overly concerned neighbor looks at me as if I am supposed to do something.
“I’ll ask Linda if this is her cat.” I volunteer, as if the overly concerned neighbor even knows who Linda is.
I walk over to Linda’s house and knock on the door. After few minutes of fumbling noises, she comes to the door. “Hi Linda”, I say, “is that your cat in the middle of the road?” And it suddenly occurs to me that I was way too cheerful when I asked this question.
Linda looks over my shoulder and says, “No, that’s not my cat, I think it belongs to Maria across the street, but I’m not sure”.
“Okay, thanks”, I say and I start to make my way to Maria’s house, but first I have to stop and give an update to the overly concerned neighbor. She has become a human pylon, waving her arms while standing in the middle of the road, motioning cars to drive around her and the dead cat.
I knock on Maria’s door and begin rehearsing the same question in my head, trying to sound more somber this time. No answer. I knock again. Nothing.
I go back to the cat and the human pylon and tell her that Maria works late and may not be up yet.
My overly concerned neighbor looks at me like I’m supposed to something.
“I’ll go inside and see if I can find a box to put him in”, I offer.
I go into the house and start to give Andy an update on what is going on.
“Did the cat get hit by a car?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I answer, “probably, but it doesn’t look like it. It looks like it just died in the middle of the road. It’s as if there were a “kitty rapture” and the cat’s soul was suddenly taken in mid-stride. Can you help me find a box?”
“A box?” he asks, “Why don’t we call animal control to come pick it up.”
“Well, we can’t just leave it in the road. What if belongs to a neighbor?” I answer. Out of the closet, I pull out a
long, brightly colored pink and white-stripped box.
“Oh no, that box won’t work.” He rummages around the closet and pulls out a smaller black box. “Here, this is more appropriate.”
“What’s wrong with my box?” I ask. “My box is larger and more sturdy. I don’t want to stuff the cat in that small box you have. And I don’t want the bottom to fall out when I pick the box up.”
“Given the circumstances”, he says,”I think the black box is a little more appropriate. Your box is too loud and colorful for a dead cat. And, I think your box is a little gay.”
“Well, that’s who we are, aren’t we? What kind of box would you expect? Gay people have gay boxes.”
“But gay people don’t have gay boxes sitting on their lawn for everyone to see.”
"I think our neighbors have figured us out.”
Well you don’t have to be so obvious about it. If your going to set that box in front of our house, I might as well parade around the front lawn, dressed like Liza Minelli, waving the rainbow flag!”
What a dated and trite overreaction I think to myself. Liza Minelli? Are we that old? Surely there is a more contemporary gay icon he could have used, maybe Lady Gaga?
I am about to suggest a more appropriate analogy, when I remember the anxious, overly concerned neighbor is waiting for me in the street. I grab a pair of latex gloves and my “gay” box hoping I won’t find two dead carcasses in the street.
Luckily, she is still playing traffic cop and I join her in the street.
I gently lift the limp body of the cat and the fretful neighbor lets out a sad “oooh” as I lay the poor creature in the box. I pick up the box and put it on the curb, out of the street. This seems to satisfy the worried neighbor, as she sighs and appears ready to get on with the rest of her day.
“Thank you”, she says, “I’ll make up some flyers to post, maybe the owner will see one of them.”
“Okay,” I answer as I walk toward my house. Did I hear her right? Make up some flyers? What exactly would these flyers say, “Dead cat found in the road, please claim him in the gay box at the front of 1213 Brentwood Street.” Would she go so far as to post a picture of the dead cat in the flyers?
“Well, Entrometido”, Andy says as I come in, “what are we supposed to do with that dead cat in a box on our lawn?”
Growing up, my family would refer to me as an “entrometido”. “Entro” meaning to enter or to insert, “metido” meaning the middle, therefore “entremetido” is someone who purposely injects themselves into the middle of things.
“I don’t know”, I answer Andy’s question, “I guess we have to wait for Maria to come home”.
“What if she’s gone all weekend? I saw someone pick her up this morning”.
“I don’t know”, I repeat, “I don’t suppose they have an animal morgue somewhere that can keep the cat until it can be identified by its owner.”
“Why don’t you just leave the box by her door?”
“Right, can you imagine the shock she would face if she came home and found her dead cat in a box at her front door? A queer box at that! What if it isn’t even her cat?”
“Well, maybe you could leave a note with the box.”
“And what exactly would it say? ‘Sorry about your cat, we found it in the street, no need to return the box. P.S. Disregard if you are not the owner’. That seems rather cruel. Let’s just wait and hope she comes home sometime this afternoon”.
I go back to my crossword puzzle, but can’t really concentrate. What exactly will I tell Maria? She is obviously going to be upset. I start going over the conversation in my head. I am getting nervous and start thinking that maybe a well-written note would be a better idea.
I periodically look out the window to see if Maria has returned. I soon start to feel resentful that my afternoon now had to be spent keeping vigil over Maria’s dead cat in our gay box. And that I was somehow stuck with having to go over to her place and give her some rotten news that will, no doubt, ruin her weekend.
Luckily or unluckily, about two hours after we found the cat, I notice the patio door is open at Maria’s house. I want to get this over with quickly so I start over to her place, not really knowing what I am going to say.
I knock on the door and Maria answers while talking on the phone. She tells the person on the other end, “Hold on a minute”. A white cat pokes its head out the door, for a moment I think
“Whew, it's not her cat, so now what do I do?”
“Hi, Maria”, I start, “Someone…um…knocked on my door to tell me that….um…they had found a cat in the middle of the road…and um…it looks like it got hit by a car and…” The last part I say real fast, like I was ripping off a band-aid, “do you know if the cat belongs to you?” It’s a stupid question. Of course she would know.
She tells the person on the other end of the phone, “Hold on, I’ll have to call you back”.
“I put it in a box in front of my house”, I say and motion for her to follow me.
“Was it black and white?” she asks.
“Yes”, I answer.
We are not fully over the box when she starts sobbing. She is sure that it’s her cat.
“I’m sorry”, I say and really mean it.
She doesn’t answer, she keeps crying, wiping the tears from her eyes.
“Do you want me to take the box over to your place?”
“Yes, thank you.” And I can tell she really means it.
I pick up the box and we walk over to her house.
I feel sorry for Maria. I can tell this unexpected loss has shaken and jarred her being. She’s no doubt feeling vulnerable. It becomes painfully obvious to me that I hardly know anything about her. Does she have close friends? A boyfriend? A girlfriend? Is there someone she can share her grief with?
Maybe I am reading too much into this incident, as I place the box on her patio.
“Thank you”, she sobs again and picks up her phone to speed dial a friend or family member.
“No problem,” I say, walking slowly back to my house.
I sit down with my crossword but don’t feel like completing my crossword puzzle anymore.
