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Death becomes Willow

Have you ever seen that PETCO commercial, the one with the "people that love pets go to PETCO" slogan, or something rather. My lady boss is like that. All her pets are pampered and preened with great care. So loved in fact that she has a mantle dedicated to her departed pets. She has framed pictures complete with nameplates, date of birth or adoption and date of death (in some cases cause of death). Most of her dogs and some cats were cremated, their ashes kept in beautifully adorned Vass. To some this is creepy but to her, love for pets extends to the after life.

Over the Holiday weekend, one of her Cats, Will, short for Willow because they initially thought it was a female, died under her bed of an apparent heart attack. Since it was a Holiday weekend they couldn't take him to the Vet. First i thought "why do you need to bring a dead cat to a Vet?" do they try to revive it? more on this later...

I've never had a pet died since the Philippines, and when our dogs died, if they weren't sick they were pulutan (finger food?) or if sick they were buried. And when my uncle Ben's dog Sparky died in his home in North Hollywood several years ago we buried poor old Sparky and i thought that was normal thing to do around here. I guess it terms of discarding dead animals, it never occurred to me that the ways of the west is different. Silly as it may sound but i always thought that animals were reincarnated and deserved proper burials. I had a gold fish once and i buried it, there's just something unholy about flushing it down the toilet, isn't there? And why is it illegal to bury dead animals in your backyard anyway? Former President Ronald Reagan was buried in the Reagan Library in Simi Valley by special City Council decree but yet you couldn't obtain one to bury your beloved pets in your own backyard, what are we paying property taxes for then damn it?. I think six feet under outta do it, don't ya think? Prelates, Knights and Saints are buried in Sanctified Church grounds so why not pets? (... as a consolation is some municipalities it is allowed to bury your dead pets in the yard. So before you dig a hole for Matilda check with the city first...)

Back to my lady boss and dead Willow. The Vets were closed so she did the next best thing, which was to stuff Willow in a heavy plastic bag, mummified him with duct tape for reinforcement and stuck him in the frigid freezer for the weekend to retard rigor. And admittedly this wasn't the first time she'd frozen an old kitty cat. According to her, a few years back a neighbor's cat keeled over and since they were out of town she'd decided to play cat-morgue good Samaritan (NICE!!).

On Tuesday the Vet called a few hours after her husband dropped off the frozen cat asking to perform autopsy. Apparently he wanted to know the cause of death but wanted permission to thaw him out first. Lovely story eh?

Posted by: Marc Gabay
Wednesday, May 31, 2006