The Death of Van?

When I came home from my book club meeting today, Xy was crying. Our neighbor, Richard, had just told her some bad news. She didn’t get all the details, so I talked to Richard myself and confirmed the following:

Around seven o’clock this morning, he saw a car stop and pick up a dead cat from the street in front of his house. It was a black cat with a pink or red collar. Van matches that description, and we haven’t seen him since last night. Richard lives just around the corner from us. I’d never seen Van on that street, but it’s certainly possible.

What’s odd is that Richard was quite clear that the car he saw did not hit the cat. The cat was already there, dead. Why would someone pick up a dead cat from the street? Richard said it was not the SPCA or public sanitation or anything of that nature. Perhaps the mystery car hit the cat earlier and came back around later to retrieve the body? It doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Not knowing for sure is aggravating. Van’s collar has a tag with our phone number, but we’ve gotten no call. Hope springs eternal and all that, but with each passing hour it seems more likely that Van is dead.

Van is survived by Lucy, Archer and Folds. He was our only boy cat. And he had very male energy. Our next-door neighbor, Craig, called him Van Halen, “because he’s always causing a ruckus” — namely, fighting with Craig’s cat.

Strange — our other male feline, Bilal, died too. That was three years ago.

What was cool was that Lucy bonded with Bilal, because we got them both as kittens and brought them up together. When Bilal died, we got Van; after many months of hissing at each other, Lucy finally bonded with Van. They would sometimes curl up together, groom each other, eat from the same dish at feeding time. They didn’t have the same territorial issues that most cats have. It was sweet.

Now it looks like Lucy’s lost her second brother. But I wish I knew for sure.