The Obituary  

Her obituary said
All the ordinary things, for the most part
Like, well, she was dead
After a long but courageous battle with cancer
Which is a line that always makes me wonder
If anyone would ever write instead
That she put up a pretty lame fight
In fact she blubbered and bitched
Throughout her entire disease
And really,
All concerned were now breathing with ease because
she’s finally shut up for good.

There are many kinds of secrets
That an obituary won’t tell
And instead
Her obituary simply read
that she was predeceased by her parents
And survived by three nieces
And a number of feline companions
And that’s where the real story begins.

This is the untold tale of the woman who died alone
At home
With her cats.
Her three-room house included no spouse
And she was buried before she ever got married.
Did she always know that this was the way it would be?
Only the cats can say for sure.
And you know cats—they’re not talking.

The woman had been attractive in an ordinary way
And almost every weekend, she’d go out on a date.
Blind dates…with the accountant from the office
The one who spit when he talked
Or the twice-divorced balding science teacher
Who smelled like a Bunsen burner….and chalk.
Or the fifty-year old bachelor farmer
Who wiggled his girlish hips just a little too much when he walked.

One night after a particularly long and grueling date
With a one hour photo cashier who showed her
A few too many pictures
of the Caribbean cruise he took with his mother
She came home
Alone
To find a large black cat waiting at her gate.
She took him in.
Now there’s nothing very strange
About giving a warm bed to a cold stray
But when she came home the next day
From yet another blind date
With what turned out to be a married radio ad salesman
There sat another cat waiting at her gate
Odd, she thought, as she let him in her door.
And the very next night
After having a bite with the aforementioned effeminate bachelor farmer
She arrived home to find four more.

Later, in bed
Alone of course
She forced herself to turn her face away
From the burning stares
Of seven pairs of unblinking amber eyes

Her cries could be heard for miles around
The next morning
When she opened her front door and found
Forty more felines
Making a beeline
For her front room.

The weeks went by and the cats kept arriving
Taking all of her free time away.
and if truth be told, she kind of liked it this way.
Saturday nights, instead of worrying about making small talk at dinner,
She’d go to a store, buy some Rip-L chips, a Cosmo
And about 100 pounds of kitty litter.

And so it went
Till almost all of her time was spent
Feeding, fluffing, and scooping poop.
She quit her job at Wal-Mart
She gave up on most everything
So she could stay home and play with string.

At first, her phone rang incessantly
Her gentlemen callers were perplexed by her absence
But after awhile, the calls slowed down
at about the same time the men from town
began disappearing.

No suspicions were raised
Until one day
the letter carrier noticed the woman’s mailbox overflowing
So he peered through a window
And saw her there--stiff and unmoving in an overstuffed chair
Cats were everywhere.
The coroner said she’d been dead
For at least two weeks.
Yet her cats were amazingly well-fed.

A distant niece came up from the east
To take care of the funeral and clean out the house
While the cats looked on.
Innocently, well, as innocent as cats can be.
It wasn’t until she discovered that first piece of chalk in the litter box
That she thought
Something’s going on.
Next she found a man’s plaid blazer hanging neatly in the hall closet
A business card in one pocket said radio sales
Dismembered fingers in the other pocket told their own tale.

She discovered the bachelor farmer’s head
Being playfully batted around by two tabbies.
And the accountant who had a great mind for adding up figures
Had been reduced to grey matter
Hanging from the black cat’s whiskers.
The niece, frozen in terror, realized something horrible had been done
But she couldn’t tell anyone
Because one of the cats got her tongue.

Eventually, the woman’s house was torn down
And the cats, numbering over 300 by now
Mysteriously disappeared
Without so much as a meow.

And the woman who lay peacefully in her grave
Will be remembered for her quiet and simple ways
And for her great affection for strays.
At least, that’s what the obituary says.

© 2006 Jan Mann