“I am ready. We can do it now.” Aww, he was being so sweet to consider my needs for a change. Maybe the loss of his teacup made him value the friends he had left. Maybe we really had reached a turning point in our relationship.
He shook his head and took on a condescending tone. “No, Angela. You are not. I wasn’t going to say anything, because I assumed you already knew, but…” He paused to take a deep, dramatic breath. “You smell like human body odor, too.”
…Or maybe nothing had changed at all.
I threw a hand on each hip and stared down at him. “So what? You want me to take a shower first?”
“Not want,” he corrected, studying his paw nonchalantly. “Require.”
I so badly wanted to call this whole ridiculous teacup funeral off, but instead I turned on my heel and headed toward the bathroom. Man, he really did have me trained.
As much as it irritated me to be told what to do by my cat, the hot water did soothe my aching muscles, and I felt more like myself after slipping into my favorite jeans and rejoining Octo-Cat downstairs.
“Ready!” I trilled, going once more to retrieve the teacup.
His furry form appeared at the top of the stairs, giving me quite the fright in the process. “No,” he said simply. “This will not do.”
“What’s wrong now?” I asked, tapping my foot impatiently. That was one bit of body language he understood well since he often did the same thing by flicking his tail.
“Isn’t it customary for humans to wear black when attending a funeral?” He tilted his head to the side as if it pained him to have to explain such a simple concept to me. After all, I was supposed to be the human expert around here.
“Yeah, but—”
He held up a paw to silence me. “That’s what I thought. So, chop chop, you.”
I sighed but went to find the dress I had worn to Ethel’s funeral a few months back, anyway. At this point my annoyance was such that my cat was lucky we weren’t headed to his funeral.
He’s grieving. He’s grieving, I reminded myself over and over again. But the truth was, he could be having the best day of his life and would still treat me this way. Most people had a sense of cats’ haughtiness and entitlement but didn’t know how deep it ran due to their inability to hold a conversation with their beloved animal overlords the way I could. Still, no matter how much he complained, Octo-Cat did forgive me for most of my flaws, so I did my best to put up with his.
The next time I came back down those stairs, I clung tightly to the handrail in case the tabby’s agitation matched my own.
Octo-Cat gave me a purr of approval as he took in my black maxi dress and swept back hair. “Finally. Now come,” he trotted through his electronic cat door and waited on the porch for me to join him. Once outside, I grabbed the tiny makeshift coffin—which had once been the box for a pair of flipflops I’d purchased from the discount shoe store—from my car’s glove box and followed him to the side of the house.
He stopped at the end of a retaining wall that had beautiful pink azaleas spilling over the sides. “I chose this spot,” the cat informed me, “because these remind me of the pretty little flowers that once lined our dearly departed teacup.”
When I squinted at the flowers and then down at the remains of the Lenox dishware in my hands, I realized that he was absolutely right. It was really quite sweet that he’d put so much thought into this. I wondered if he’d be so discerning when planning my farewell, should he outlive me. A morbid thought, it was true, but with all the murders around here lately, it was also a valid one.
“Should I go get a shovel?” I asked when he made no move to dig into the soft earth.
“That would be for the best, Angela.” He bowed his head reverently. Was he praying? If so, what deity did cats pray to? Did he have the same God as me? And how did one send off a soulless object to the great beyond? So many questions when, honestly, I’d always just assumed my cat worshiped himself and expected me to join his strange religion as well.
I left him to his… whatever he was doing. There would be time for questions later. Now I had to respect the strange ritual I didn’t quite understand but knew enough to see it was of vital importance to him.
Luckily, it didn’t take me long to find a small hand shovel among the supplies in Ethel’s gardening shed. As I jogged back to the scene of our interment, I wondered if Ethel had ever tended to the landscaping herself or if she’d always hired it out. I also wondered how long it would take for me to learn the specific care for each of the many types of plants that lined the property. Hopefully not so long that I killed some of them in my ineptitude. I really didn’t want to have any more funerals for inanimate objects. Sure, plants were technically living, but I still didn’t think they deserved to have funerals in their honor. Obviously, the teacup was a special case; I hoped this was obvious to my cat as well.
Returning to him, I settled onto my knees and began to dig in the spot Octo-Cat had pointed out. While I did this, he stood by and started a lengthy eulogy about the life and times of his friend teacup.
“It always gave me water when I was thirsty,” he moaned. I decided not to point out that this was because he refused to drink from any other vessel.
“And unlike it’s brother,” Octo-Cat continued. “It was never contaminated by letting a fly into my Evian.” His voice quivered as he continued, “No, siree. It kept the water in and the flies out, just like a good teacup should do. I’ll miss you, teacup. Breakfast just won’t be the same without you. Nor will my dinner.”
I worked very hard to keep my face straight, and thank goodness for that, because he turned toward me in complete seriousness and said, “Now it’s your turn to say a few words.”
Well, shoot. Why hadn’t I prepared anything? I should’ve seen this coming from miles away. Still at a loss, I said the first thing that came to mind, hoping it would please him. “It was a good teacup. Pretty. Matched the others in its set.”
“It did! It did!” Octo-Cat cried, and when he drew quiet again, I heard the unmistakable sound of a crash on the other side of the woods.
“What was that?” I whispered to my tabby.
He stood quietly, staring down into the open grave I’d dug for the teacup and its coffin.
“Did you hear that crash?” I asked again, more frantically this time. What if the murderer was back? What if he was coming for us and we were just sitting right out in the open, unmoving, not even looking?
My palms began to sweat. Thank goodness I was no longer holding onto the teacup, because I’d have dropped it to a second death.
Octo-Cat kept his eyes cast downward, still serious, still reverent, completely unmoved by my fear. “I think we’re just about done here,” he said sorrowfully. “Angela, will you please shovel in the dirt?”
I nodded and carefully pushed the dirt around the shoe box as Octo-Cat sang a mournful song with no words, only mews. It would have been beautiful, if I wasn’t worried that it was leading a killer straight to us. Luckily, he closed his eyes as he sang, which enabled me to glance over my shoulder and keep an eye on the woods.
It took about five minutes to finish his wordless song. Our weird ritual now finished to his apparent satisfaction, he bowed his head one more time and said, “Okay, time to go play detective,” then ran head-long into the woods.
Chapter Eight
I could scarcely keep up as Octo-Cat tore his way through the dense forest. Branches slapped into my chest as I wove my way deeper and deeper. The woods that joined the two properties didn’t run more than fifty feet wide at the most, but with no clear path to guide me through, they felt much deeper and darker than they had by the light of the afternoon.
Even treading carefully, I managed to snag my foot on a knotted root, which sent me careening face forward into the dirt. Of course, I’d needlessly been wearing open-toed dress shoes for the teacup funeral, which made for a particularly painful toe-stubbing experience.