Taking care of other people's animals is never wise. We had this paranoid neighbor once that had this old black cat. The old man was a magician and I think he pulled this cat out of his hat or whatever, but was real attached to it. Anyway he went on a cruise and would be largely out of touch and wanted to know if I'd take care of his cat while he was away. All I had to do was go by his vaulted house and get by all the security safeguards without the police coming and then feed his cat once a day and make sure it had water. Sounded easy so while he was away I fed the cat. He had told me that sometimes the cat wouldn't eat all its food so just throw out the old food and put new in the dish.
Went over there every day and fed this cat and every day that cat would be in the same place and just look at me while I did his food thing. After a couple of days the cat wasn't around so I just changed its food and went on and this happened a couple of days and I realized it looked like the food wasn't even touched. So I start sneaking around the house thinking I'm about to set off some secondary alarm somewhere and he's got all this bizarre magician stuff all around and it was truly hard to find a cat in all that, but I finally found him. The little feller was stretched out on the bedroom floor dead as a bag of hammers.
I didn't know what to do. I couldn't reach the guy so I took him back home and we had a box freezer at the time so we decided to freeze him untill the man got home in case he wanted to, IDK - perform an autopsy or whatever. He was very mistrusting and I thought maybe he would think I wasn't taking care of it since it croaked on my watch. So - stuck him in a glad tall kitchen garbage bag and in the box freezer. The guy came home a few days later and the only way I knew this was his car was in his driveway so we took the cat out of the freezer and this thing was a block of ice with fur. We thought about the microwave but were uncertain of what effect defrost would have on its hair so I decided to just make a little box - like a cat casket - and put him in there and then really nail it shut with glue and claim ignorance - something I am good at. So I made a little box, it just took a little while - and this stupid froze cat wouldn't fit. One leg just kept - no matter what position I put him in that one leg just wouldn't get in the box. So - i was panicking a little here - don't judge me, but I just..... broke his little leg and flopped it on in there. He was still in the garbage bag so you couldn't really tell.
I wrestled with how I should go over there. We had called him when he could be reached and told him the news so he knew the cat was dead, but I wrestled with whether I should take the box with me or just ask him if he wanted the body - cuz if he didn't want the body, I'd be in the clear, but if he did, then it would, of course, complicate things, so I opted for not bringing the cat casket with me. When I got there he was all sad and he understood and asked me a few things and it all sounded like something the cat would probably do, he said, so I told him we had preserved the body and I had made a little box if he wanted it. If not, then I would bury him out at our place. He decided he wanted it so I got it, but he just buried him out in his barbed wire back yard and was really appreciative of the box and said it was beautiful and it was, really, except for you know...the leg thing.
