Funny story about the dead cat who came back

From Redditt - reminded me of our episode with our old, sick cat we thought had died in his sleep. My wife and I both wept over him recalling highpoints, lowpoints in our shared existence until he opened one eye , gave us a shitty look and walked away. Loved that cat.


"So this actually happened 3 years ago when my daughter was 4 years old. It was a situation that started out terribly but actually ended up being a funny story my wife and I can now laugh about.... until today.

We adopted our cat from a local shelter before my daughter was born. He was an orange kitten named Six. The shelter had named him Six because he had six claws on one of his paws. We adopted him and changed his name to Chase, because that's all this cat did. He chased his own tail, dogs, birds, other cats, etc.

I work from home, and every day I would drop my daughter off at preschool where she'd stay for 4 hours. When I returned to the house after dropping her off on this day, I opened the door to the house and Chase raced outside. I didn't think much of it, because he'd frequently go outside in the afternoons and come back home around supper time.

A few hours after sitting at my computer working, I got up to get a drink out of the kitchen. I glanced out our front window and noticed a dead orange cat in the middle of our busy street. My heart sank, and I ran out to it. It was definitely dead, and I was so freaked out I panicked and ran into the house and grabbed a shoe box and put him in it. I called my wife at work, and she was devastated. Chase was really more her cat than mine, as he always preferred her lap, and never really paid much attention to me unless he needed something. She told me she was leaving work early and would pick up some flowers and we could have a funeral for him after we picked up our daughter.

I didn't really know how we were going to tell our daughter. She was an animal lover, and Chase slept with her every night. My stomach hurt just thinking about how this was going to hurt her. So my wife comes home and she is crying, and I ask her if she wants to see him. She tells me she can't bear the thought of seeing Chase dead, and just wants to go pick up our daughter so we can honor our precious cat and put him to rest.

When we pick up our daughter she can see her mommy has been crying and immediately asks what's wrong. My wife can barely get out to her what has happened before breaking down again, so I end up having to tell her, and my daughter starts crying in HYSTERICS before I can even get all the words out. Now, call me a puss if you must, but seeing my daughter cry like that made me cry.

We get home and while my wife continues to console my daughter by looking through old pictures of Chase, I go out to our backyard and choose a spot to bury our beloved kitty. I dig the hole and go inside to let them know I was ready for our celebration of life for Chase.

I bring the box out, and my wife and daughter are following close behind and my daughter is clenching a photo of him to her chest while sobbing. I feel horrible. I hug our daughter as she sobs on my chest and I start to tell the story of when we first adopted Chase.

My wife and I are huddled with our daughter staring down at the box in the ground when all of the sudden an orange cat walks up and rubs his side along my wife's leg. I stop talking and my wife grabs the cat and yells, "Oh my god! It's Chase! What the hell?!" and looks at me like I am the scum of the earth. "Didn't you check the dead cat for the six claws?!" I didn't. Honestly, as weird as it may seem, it didn't even occur to me in the slightest that this might not be our cat. It was the same color and size, and I was so freaked out I didn't even consider for a minute that it wasn't him. My daughter was beyond thrilled Chase was still alive, but sad that someone had lost a kitty.

So, we ended up having a funeral for a cat that somebody had lost, even though we never ended up finding out who's cat it was. (We had put up flyers throughout the neighborhood with information.) A few days after this happened, I got a collar with tags for Chase, so I never have to worry about this reoccurring with us OR some other idiot, for that matter.

Now my daughter is in 1st grade, and today she brought home a journal where on one page they had drawn a picture of a day that they felt very sad. My daughter drew a picture of me, my wife, her, Chase, a box, and above it her teacher narrated the drawing with, "The day my dad lied and told me my cat died, even though he didn't."