Of course not, its a good 2-3 blocks from our house. And yet as I drove past, thinking to myself, "poor kitty", I noticed something familiar about the kitty. My heart sank as I realized this flattened feline was our Lilly.
I'm a sucker. We have a LOT of cats. "We" had two, we agreed to keep a couple for my brother for a couple of months (that was 6 years ago), and we inherited a colony of ferrel cats with our house that I finally have tamed after years of coaxing and disobeying city laws. Factor in a rough winter, survival of the fittest and thyroid cancer, our official count is 6 (3 inside, 2 inside/outside and 1 outside).
But Lilly was "the one". The coveted one. The one that slept with Thing 1 every night. The one that let both Thing 1 and Thing 2 pack her around, put her in any precarious situation--aka the baby strollers. She was the sweet one, the cuddly one. Just...the one. So of course she was the one to meet an untimely demise, right?
I have a pretty staunch "truth" policy with Thing 1 and Thing 2. I tell them the truth because I expect them to tell me the truth. The Lorax calls me naive. I am confident karma will come thru for me in the end. Alas, today, that truth policy meant I had to tell Thing 1 the kitty we saw in the road was, in fact, Lilly.
It sucked.
She cried. I cried. Thing 2...well, she tried to be comforting, offered kind words to her sister. And then her appeals just went WAY wrong.
"I'll tell you a story about your Lilly to make you feel better. Once upon a time, there was a cat named Lilly. She got runned over by a car. So she went to heaven and got wings and used them to fly back to her Delaney because she loved her so much. But then she got runned over again and it hurt really really really bad and...." That's as far as the story was allowed to go.
And that was just the beginning of Thing 2's obsession of using the death of Lilly to tease Thing 1. All day long.
For instance, Thing 1 finally pulled it back together. Out of nowhere, Thing 2 says, "Awww...I know you miss Lilly. Because she's dead," and later "Don't you wish you could see Lilly? But you can't, not ever again."
The worst, however, came at rest time. Thing 2 jumped up and looked outside the bedroom window and called to her sister..."Come quick, Lilly is outside the window." Was I wrong????
No, it was a sick and twisted joke and the sound of the laugh that followed was just...wrong. I really don't know where she gets that kind of mean, but it really scares me sometimes.
That's not true, I secretly know where it comes from. All day, I've had the urge to ask "Why did Lilly cross the road?" and then answer, "She didn't make it across the road." But when you are the one who has carried a swollen, twisted dead kitty out of the road so your daughter won't have to see it, knowing who it is?
I think I've earned it.
RIP, Lilly Francine Batterson. You will be sincerely missed, especially by your little redheaded pal.
Lilly with her new wings, by Thing 1
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