Satisfaction Brought Her Back
Do You Want to Do Some Witchcraft?
Nothing really distances yourself from the grief of losing your beloved pet quite like waiting at the animal services foyer for a very loud and bureaucratic hour while overworked people try to admit and adopt found and abandoned animals.
I waited for my name to be called so I could collect the remains of Minerva, my portly affectionate cat who had slipped out a window three months before and despite diligent flyering and massive neighbor support, did not come home.
Minerva, like all cats, was a font of personality. She was chubby and cuddly and sweet to all strangers. She had picked me at the animal shelter when I needed to get my cat a friend, and she walked right up to me and cuddled into my arm before tackling another kitten. That was the right combination of attributes for my house. She was the mayor of my apartment building. Wandering in and saying hello, getting pets and treats, and my neighbors sent me photos of her rolling on their couches and playing with their babies.
The vet called her “well fed and…uh…spirited” which was code for, “your cat is a fat asshole, lady.”
I loved her.
I got the alert on her chip and for fifteen glorious minutes, I thought I was getting my cat back. Then a police officer called me to tell me that Minerva had been found deceased, and I wondered what you had to do to end up on the sort of desk duty where you had to call cat ladies all day telling them their cats were dead.
Animal Services turned over a blue cat carrier that was cold from the freezer, and I drove with her in the backseat, windows down because she had a slight smell, and wondered why I was doing all this.
My mother also wondered why I was doing all this, as I called her after putting Minerva’s solid and firm body into a pillowcase, and buried her at the bottom of a deep planter, covering her in lovely lavender bushes.
“I have a Taurus moon, you see, I struggle to let things go.”
“I’m going to pretend I understand what that means.”
Minerva was deeply beloved, which made all of this harder. I had to text the neighbors, I had to call my mother, my sister, my friends, everyone who had been hopeful that she would find her way either to the old place or back to the new place. I had to tell the guy I had hooked up and then broken up with who would only ask me if she had turned up that she was dead. Admittedly, his face of crumpled embarrassment was rather entertaining.
2023 had been a year of things happening to me. A sudden and unwelcome move, my father being diagnosed with cancer, but I repeated to my sister over the phone, “did I really have to lose my cat too?”
I had hoped that maybe she had found another family. That she hadn’t felt abandoned but somehow free. I hoped she would turn up at the neighbor’s, going so far as to drop off wet food at their place to bait her, they even renewed their Nest cam subscription to try to get video of her.
Someone left dried flowers tucked into her Lost and Found poster. I got dozens of calls about a black cat being spotted on various street corners. None of them her.
Every lost animal poster became a shrine. I had to circle the neighborhood and take all of mine down because she was no longer lost, or rather, she had been found and still remained lost.
On this solstice, eighteen months after burying Minerva in a half barrel planter, I dug up her bones.
“Why are we doing this,” My mother and sister both asked.
“I think I just want her home again,” I said, not having a better answer.
I had planned a ritual of silence, listening to nordic folk music, a trial of extraction trying to access the solemn and respectful place of death. But instead, my sister told me stories over the phone, my cell in the deep pockets of my raincoat with the white snaking cord of my headphones tangling up with the shovel.
“I don’t want you to have to do this by yourself.”
I worried she wouldn’t be there at all. Somehow rejecting me a second time. But she was still in her Ikea pillowcase shroud, all bones and dirt and rainwater, and I sifted through the dirt with my hands pulling out ribs, jaw bones, skull. The teeth that she had used to gently nibble me for pets were lined with dark earth.
Easter, Minerva’s replacement, investigated as I sifted a plastic tub of bones in my bathtub.
“This was the one before you, Easter. Your ancestor, I guess. She was a really really great cat.”
Easter reached out her nose for a sniffly kiss and purred.
Enjoying this newsletter and want to start doing magic in your own life? Check out Spells for Success, an easy to use deck of spells for everyday problems. Order through your local bookstore or Bookshop.
Find me by sending a crow to the only streetlight in the smallest town you've ever heard of.
Or by checking out my website laureneparker.com