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wondered if she had special "dead cat gloves" approved by
the Society for Dead Cats, "Inspected by Don."
But she came
out wearing clear plastic gloves. I decided I'd better be the assistant
in this operation.
"Next,
we need a cardboard box," she said. I brought a box from the
house. "Don't you think that's rather large?" she said.
I told her I didn't have anything else.
"How
about an old towel?" she suggested. She was either responding
to an innate Japanese sense or she had gotten an A in Dead Cats
101.
I ran into
the house and brought out a pink, flower-print towel I had always
disliked.
"No,
no," she said and disappeared again into her house. I pictured
Ueda-san going through her impeccable towel closet: beach towels,
bath towels, sento towels, free post-office towels, pre-packaged
omiage towels, pre-packaged omiage towels with quaint French sayings,
hand towels, dead cat towels. She emerged with a white towel sheared
on both ends.
I couldn't
stand the thought of picking up the fuzzy kitty and arranging him
properly on his death towel. But of course, Ueda-san would do it
for me.
She picked
up the cat, "He's stiff!"
Now, I'm sorry,
but when a cat is that hard, it's not a cat anymore. A cat should
not be stiff. In the same way a cat should not be soluble, a cat
should not be stiff.
Thus, having
lost all the favorable qualities of catness, we now had an almost
two-dimensional, cat-shaped placard. This put me at ease. I would
not be burying a cat, just something shaped like a cat.
Ueda-san wrapped
the towel like a kimono, leaving the head and whiskers visible.
I didn't have
a shovel but Ueda-san didn't ask. She disappeared into her gardening
shed. Perhaps, I thought, she is going to retrieve a Panasonic "Guraibu
Digga" that, when switched to the "cat" setting,
cuts out a grave in the shape of a cat, complete with imprints for
head, whiskers and tail. Turn on the motor and it sucks out the
soil and empties it into a neat cone-like pile next to the hole.
I was relieved
when, instead, she came out brandishing a shovel.
Together,
we carried the placard cat up into the mountain. We dug and dug,
through stones and tree roots, until finally we had cleared a large
enough hole.
Then,
with the tenderness of a grandmother who has buried far too many
cats in her lifetime, Ueda-san laid the kitty down in the hole.
We covered the grave and marked it with a flat stone and a frond.
I gave a little prayer. The rest was up to the Mountain God.
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