Two Cats In the Yard

Pets were the furthest things from her mind as Vera conducted her seasonal ritual, the change-up of the items stored in the hall closet. Out with winter, in with summer.

A bellow from the basement jolted her, a bellow that was born deep down inside the diaphragm of a ten-year-old old boy.

“Aaaarghhh! Mom!”

Vera jumped at the murderous yell. What in God’s name are those kids up to now? She was startled rather than alarmed. Not out of any lack of concern for the welfare of her darling children, mind you, but because her motherly intuition told her it was a scream of surprise rather than hurt, of having blundered into someplace a youngster ought not be, rather than having committed injury to themselves. Mothers were hard-wired to know these things.

Annoyed by the disruption, Vera sat down a box of mitts and gloves, detritus of a long winter. She squirmed backwards on all fours out of the closet, chastising Chip, the family’s chocolate lab, when he goosed her with his wet nose. She struggled to straighten her plumping 40-something frame, gently swatted Chip away and hobbled like the Hunchback of Notre Dame to the top of the basement steps. Excited childish chatter rose from the lower level, punctuated with words like “cat,” “froze” and “gross.” Vera’s maternal mind deftly linked the loose threads into a single disturbing picture of cinematic-like clarity.

“Oh, my God,” she murmured. “Peabody!”

Vera called to her youngsters in a tone of controlled nonchalance: “What’s up, guys? What are you kids doing down there?”

“There’s a cat in the freezer,” called up Harry, Vera and Paul Belanger’s ten-year-old.

“It’s all gross, Mom,” added Harry’s sister Maisie, seven. “It’s all dead-looking, too.”

Vera’s heart fluttered. Why hadn’t she disposed of the telltale corpse? She’d had all winter to have Paul haul the evidence in its plastic garbage bag shroud to the curb for the trashmen as had been her diabolical plan. Yet there was Peabody still, respectfully laid out beneath the frozen entrées and the Christmas cakes and baked goods she’d placed overtop of him, like a culinary tombstone, months ago. Oh, Procrastination, thy name is Vera. Now look what you’ve unleashed.

“Mom,” called Harry. “Why’s there a cat in the freezer?”

Why, indeed, thought Vera. Where had it all gone wrong?

*****

Twelve months earlier, Vera Belanger, elementary school teacher, middle-aged mother of two bundles of youthful energy, was hauling in the groceries from the SUV when a thud of undetermined origin caught her attention. Placing the groceries onto the tailgate, she walked around to the side of the family’s suburban monster home to investigate. Her eyes focused on a pale pink brick that had landed on the ground, having dropped from the peak of the house’s chimney.

Vera said a small prayer for not having been standing in the spot where the brick fell, then cursed this latest example of the lousy workmanship that had been visited upon the Belangers. Why hadn’t she listened to Paul, when he offered his withering assessment of modern craftsmanship and argued in favour of the purchase of an older, more solid house in the city core? “They don’t make them the way they used to,” Paul said in what Vera had at the time dismissed as nothing more than clichéd male foolishness.

“An older house is going to need work,” she reasoned. “And I’m not prepared to try to raise a family in the midst of the dust and dirt of renovations. I want something new. Something that doesn’t need any work. Something we can just move into.”

Opting for familial peace over what he considered common sense, Paul reluctantly bowed to her wishes. To Vera’s joy, they settled on a brick monster home set in a place called Heritage Acres at the edge of the city, even though it would mean a forty-five-minute commute to Paul’s downtown office. For Vera, it was just a five-minute drive to the school where she taught Grade Six. Their brick fortress sat amidst hundreds of modern-day castles that stretched along indistinguishable curving streets bereft of sidewalks. It wasn’t Paul’s idea of a home, but spousal bliss won out.

As Vera peered more critically at the brick, she realized it had landed on top of something, and drew closer for a proper inspection. Her heart leaped to her throat as she realized the dark lump that lay beneath the plunging weapon of destruction was an animal. Further review told her the animal was Mrs. Pudley, the next-door neighbour Melvin family’s brown and cream-coloured cat.

The Melvins had moved in just a month after Vera and Paul had arrived a year ago and joined the nondescript community of klunky, oversized houses named – God knows why – Heritage Acres. There was nothing that spoke “heritage” about the oversized brick boxes and insofar as “acreage” was concerned, that too was a joke, given the bathmat-sized lots onto which the developer had wedged the gigantic homes.

Relations had never been warm between the Melvins and the Belangers, due in large part to the greeting proffered by Chip, the Belangers’ hyperactive chocolate Lab. Vera and Paul fervently held that when God was handing out brains to Labs, Chip was out chasing rabbits in a field somewhere, because from the day he entered their lives, he seemed better equipped for high-tailed frolicking than for sober canine contemplation.

When the Melvins arrived, the builder had not yet had the neighbourhood landscaped and it had been a rainy spring. Space where lawns would someday be laid in green ribbons was instead rutted, rocky and muddy. On the very day the Melvins moved in, Chip had splashed joyfully through the quagmire, then squeezed himself through a partially open screen door and torn through the Melvins’ new house — upstairs and down — spreading mud liberally about. Paul and Vera’s humiliation-driven apologies and offer to help clean up had failed to placate the irate newcomers. Vera always felt that what turned the tide against reconciliation was the fact that among the victims of Chip’s canine frolic had been a previously pristine pillow, embroidered with a gaudy image of Niagara Falls, that Megan Melvin’s mother had completed years ago.

Then, for some inexplicable reason, a brick from Vera and Paul’s chimney had taken into its head to plunge from its rightful spot and murder the unsuspecting Mrs. Pudley, the Melvins’ beloved pet. Images of her disgrace over the Chip incident returned as Vera ran inside for a plastic garbage bag, grabbed a shovel from the garage and gingerly plated Mrs. Pudley’s remains on top of the bag. She folded the plastic overtop the pathetic creature’s remains, then waited for Paul to come home and made him cart the feline carcass across to the Belangers’ back door.

“A terrible thing has happened,” Vera told Megan Melvin when she answered their knock. “But at least she didn’t suffer.”

Vera still awakened in the night, certain she heard afresh Megan’s wails of anguish over the cruel fate of the much-adored and previously cute-as-the-dickens Mrs. Pudley. If Chip’s rampage had shattered any chance of neighbourliness between the households, Mrs. Pudley’s demise at the hands of a piece of murderous masonry had put paid to it. Vera later heard from neighbours that the Melvins had labelled them dangerous sociopaths.

Then last autumn, mere months since the contractor’s crew had come calling, completed repairs and promised there would be no further such ugly incidents of construction mayhem, another piece of the house came crashing down. And in a case of kismet gone awry, this time the material had tumbled onto the unsuspecting head of the Belangers’ own cat, Peabody. It was Vera again whose luck it was to have discovered the corpse, this time on the back yard patio. Actually, it was Chip who was first on the scene, nudging his nose into the mess and snorting loudly when dust lodged in his sensitive doggie nostrils.

“At least it wasn’t the children who found him,” said Paul when Vera recounted news of the latest calamity.

“Thank heavens for small mercies,” Vera replied with a scowl directed into her husband’s sympathetic face.

Neither parent could stomach facing Harry and Maisie with the news. Peabody had been with Vera and Paul since before Harry was born. The children had grown up with him being always there. How could they break the tragic news?

That’s when Vera came up with the idea to flash-freeze Peabody and lay him out at the bottom of the huge freezer chest they kept in the basement. Once winter set in, they – meaning Paul, of course – would relocate Peabody to the curb and place him next to the garbage to be picked up with the rest of the refuse. Surely the children would have forgotten him by then. It would be an ignoble ending to Peabody’s existence, but it would spare the children the grisly details.

“They’d be just heartbroken if we told them,” Vera rationalized in devising her sinister Hitchcockian plot.

Vera decided the children would be told that Peabody had disappeared and that probably he had found a home with another nice family who fed him his favourite meal of barbecued tuna, and other feline delicacies, to his heart’s content. She felt hugely guilty when the children made up Missing Cat posters and tacked them to telephone poles and store bulletin boards around Heritage Acres. It broke her heart to see them rush home from school every day and check for phone messages to see if someone had found Peabody. But, she reasoned, the truth would surely have hurt them more. After a couple of weeks the children gave up all hope of getting Peabody back and accepted Vera’s assurances that the cat was now happily engaged with a new family somewhere.

“B-b-but why wasn’t he happy here?” Maisie had asked at first, her lips quivering with emotion. Vera stifled a sniffle. She was unable to reply.

Peabody had been expertly wrapped, by Paul of course, in layers of plastic as Vera set aside the food in the freezer and prepared his crypt. There was a hollowed out area in the appliance next to the motor where Peabody fit as though it had been made for him. Paul then placed a piece of plywood overtop the cat-filled cavity to act as a protective barrier, then Vera began to lay the frozen food back inside. Once winter had set in properly, they would choose a particularly cold garbage night and retrieve Peabody for streetside pickup. Disposing of humans should be so easy, thought Vera.

Why they had failed to carry out this final part of the plan was anyone’s guess. Forgetfulness or squeamishness? On more than one occasion, Vera was startled awake with nightmares of Peabody returning from the dead, in a Heritage Acres version of Pet Sematary. Her guilt grew and festered.

***

“Why’s there a cat in the freezer?” Harry asked again. “Mom? And why’s it so flat?” he added.

It seemed a reasonable question, but it left Vera struck mute. How could she explain to her children that Peabody had befallen the same fate as Mrs. Pudley? Who, even a small and trusting child, would believe such a macabre coincidence was possible? And, more to the point, how was she going to explain that she and Paul had kept the facts from them and instead told them Peabody had wandered away to live with a new family? When she thought about it, she wondered whether that story might not have hurt them more than the truth, regardless of how horrid it was.

It occurred to her that perhaps the children wouldn’t recognize their beloved Peabody. After all, being struck by the falling portion of house had altered his appearance considerably. What if she made up another story? But no, Vera realized the jig was up. Like Al Capone caught with the unpaid tax money, Vera knew there was no way out. The truth must be told.

“Honey, it’s like this,” she began, sitting the children down at the kitchen table and pouring them each a glass of orange juice. She momentarily contemplated a glass of gin for herself and dearly wished that Paul were home to help her bear the shame and guilt of having to admit the whole sordid cover-up. But there was no escape. The plot to hide Peabody had been hers and now in a cruel stroke of justice, it was her responsibility to fess up.

When she had finished the tale – the true story of Peabody’s sudden departure – the children sat quietly, letting the facts sink in. It was Maisie who spoke first. “This house is a cat-killer,” she pronounced definitively. Harry giggled. “But mom,” he said, “why did you put Peabody in the freezer? We could have just buried him, you know. Sometimes, Mom, you do the darndest things.”

Vera breathed a long sigh. The kids were taking this a lot better than she’d imagined. She began to ponder Harry’s question. Why, indeed, had she put the cat in the freezer? It had taken the maturity and common sense of her young children to make her recognize the absurdity.

She reached for an explanation that didn’t sound ridiculous. But before Vera could muster an answer, Maisie said: “Let’s bury him now.” Which is what they did, as soon as Paul arrived home from the office. Paul and Harry grabbed shovels and dug a hole next to the fence. Paul darted into the basement for Peabody and delivered him to the gravesite. Maisie and Vera came out of the house to join the solemn occasion, Maisie holding a stone on which she had printed “Peabody” in red marker pen.

Maisie and Harry took turns delivering Peabody’s eulogy. They spoke about how he had enjoyed a dozen successful years on this earth. About how his chosen line of work had been house pet and his favourite hobbies had been chasing squirrels and field mice. How he’d revelled in tantalizing Chip by jumping on his back while the dog was sleeping, then running to hide just out of reach beneath some piece of furniture where he seemed to know he was perfectly safe.

The funeral was tinged with sadness, but sprinkled throughout were chuckles and smiles, memories of a cat’s life lived large.

After the ceremony, the family gathered at the picnic table while Paul grilled some tuna – Peabody’s favourite meal – and shared more stories about their beloved pet. Vera still regretted how she’d been responsible for misleading the children about Peabody’s death, and felt especially guilty when she thought about how they had so quickly forgiven her. Their childish trust brought tears to her eyes.

“I guess they’re a lot more mature than we give them credit for,” Paul told her that night as they lay in bed reliving the day’s astonishing events. “I suppose we protect them too much.”

Vera nodded. Paul reached gently for her hand. She was silent for a while before saying: “I’m thinking maybe we should put the house up for sale and start looking for something downtown. Something with charm and maybe needing some fixing up. It might be safer for Chip. I don’t trust this house around pets.”