Making fun of the dead. Quite probably with their approval.

[captainsblog]

We buried the cat today.

Mrs. Conclusion : Hullo, Mrs. Premise.

Mrs. Premise : Hullo, Mrs. Conclusion.

Conclusion: Busy Day?

Premise: Busy? I just spent four hours burying the cat.

Conclusion: *Four hours* to bury a cat?

Premise: Yes - it wouldn't keep still.

Conclusion: Oh - it wasn't dead, then?

Premise: No, no - but it's not at all well, so as we were going to be on the safe side.

Conclusion: Quite right - you don't want to come back from Sorrento to a dead cat. It'd be so anticlimactic. Yes, kill it now, that's what I say. We're going to have to have our budgie put down.

Premise: Really - is it very old?

Conclusion: No, we just don't like it. We're going to take it to the vet tomorrow.

Premise: Tell me, how do they put budgies down, then?

Conclusion: Well, it's funny you should ask that, because I've just been reading a great big book about how to put your budgie down, and apparently you can either hit them with the book, or you can shoot them just there, just above the beak.

Premise: Just there? Well, well, well. 'Course, Mrs Essence flushed hers down the loo.

Conclusion: No, you shouldn't do that - no, that's dangerous. They *breed* in the *sewers*!

Our ceremony was a bit more solemn. We finally got round to filling the hole for Biggsy with his cremains. Under him went our third-oldest pet- a close to six-year old goldfish that weighed in at just under half a pound when she bit the dust sometime Sunday afternoon. On top of him went a couple of chocolate chip cookies and a heart-shaped cookie sheet, both memories of his finest hour where he helped the dogs topple an entire plate of Christmas cookies in the wee hours of Boxing Eve.

What a way for a kitty to go.

A neighbor's outdoorish cat, who bears a striking resemblance to the first of our felines to die three Augusts ago, happened by at the very moment of our little funeral. We like to think it was Bozo doing a little bit of reincarnation for our benefit.

Shortly after I left thereafter, our youngest cat disappeared for several hours, after the kid had left a door open.  By feeding time, of course, she was back (actually, she'd never left). I think they need constant reminding that we love them and would miss the stuffing out of them if they left us prematurely.

----

Connecting the skit above to the other death news of the day was this: Eleanor reported, from something she read online, that Elvis Presley was a big Monty Python fan.

Today's the 30th anniversary of his death.  I cannot let the occasion pass (so to speak) without quoting Kinky Friedman's definitive speculation on what The King's last words must have been:

"Corn? When did I eat corn?"

Hopefully, his Nixon-era narcotics badge made it to heaven even though Nixon never got to deliver it to him:



In a cruel twist of colon irony, the King was scheduled to be within three miles of my home a mere six nights after his death. Only about 150 of the 15,000-plus ticketholders for that cancelled Nassau Mausoleum show have ever come forward to turn in their tickets for face-value refunds.  The rest no doubt still expect the gig to be rescheduled for some night after an Islander game.

I think that's all I've got to say tonight. Thanku, thankuvermush.

Comments

[headbanger118.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the sketch...I laughed out loud. And I do believe a bit of humor with a graveside service is a good thing indeed. Remind me to post about my grandmother's giant pink plastic telephone someday.

I'm somewhat amazed to hear The King was a Python fan. Heh.