Brace Yourselves

This may well be the weirdest thing you've ever read here on SingleTails.

It's not about my sick and twisted fantasy life. It's not about pooping my pants in the supermarket in Plumsteadville. It's not about wearing my stepmother's panties to her funeral. (Nothing new in any of those, right?)

This is about a messy divorce.

You see, I have recently realized that my Ex from the seven-and-a-half-year relationship dug up the remains of my beloved cat, Ned, dumped them in a hefty bag with some of my clothes and books that I couldn't take with me when I left, and had them delivered by the movers I hired.

"Realized"? What's up with that?

I was sitting with a guy at Starbucks recently, and he told me about how his dog had died over the winter. He and a friend of his snuck into a local park at night, and he buried his dog in the woods where they would frequently walk.

Such a sweet story, huh? I was thinking about it later, driving home, and it dawned on me. My Ex dug up my beloved cat Ned, and...

Okay. Here are the facts.

1. It was an argument about my beloved cat Ned's cremains that made me decide to leave. Y'see, the year before, while we were on vacation in New Mexico that I got a phone call from Pennsylvania. My sister had died. Her death was not unexpected. But still. We flew home a day early. I found Ned in the laundry room downstairs, lying on his side. We rushed him to the vet. He had a blood clot. The same thing my sister had died of. We took him to the vets. A day later, the phone call came. Ned had died. A month later, the vet sent his cremains. "So," asked my Ex, what do you want to do with them?" I told him how I wanted to bury them in the back yard. Ned loved that yard. He'd be out there, sunning himself, stalking bugs and birds, quite the New World for a city cat. I liked the idea of Ned out there frolicking in the moonlight for all eternity.

And my Ex exploded. "I do all the work out there! I'm the one who waters it every day!" I was used to his anger and his yelling, but a month after my sister had died, at a moment like this... It was too much. I decided that that was enough. I wouldn't try to make it work any more. I was outta there. And in a year, I was.

2. So then, after I left, there was the issue of all the stuff I hadn't been able to fit in my jeep when I said goodbye to Brooklyn and him. We decided that he would pack up everything, and I would hire movers to bring it to my new place in Beautiful Downtown Jersey City. We were discussing this on the phone, and he said, ominously, "Be very careful when you're going through the bags. There's something important I don't want you to miss."

3. So there I was, unpacking it all. I found all this ash in one bag. I assumed that it was incense that we used to burn.

I am positive that... well, that my Ex dug up the cremains of my beloved cat, Ned, and sent them to me in a Hefty bag.

In a way, I'm surprised. I never gave him much credit in the Diabolically Vindictive Ingenuity department.

I haven't spoken to him since we split, but if and when our paths cross again, I sure know what I'll be saying to him.

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