True story from my missionary days:
Some members invited all four missionaries living in our flat over to have dinner. While walking out of the home afterwards, we were surprised to discover a dead cat beside the door of our vehicle.
Being helpful missionary-types, we offered to dispose of the cat for the single mother and the aging, infirm grandmother. We found a shovel and a garbage bag, inserted the rotting carcass into it, and moved to deposit it in her garbage can. “Oh, no,” she said, “I cannot stomach the thought of a dead cat lying in my garbage for a week until the next garbage day. Please, will you take care of it for me?”
True story from my missionary days:
Some members invited all four missionaries living in our flat over to have dinner. While walking out of the home afterwards, we were surprised to discover a dead cat beside the door of our vehicle.
Being helpful missionary-types, we offered to dispose of the cat for the single mother and the aging, infirm grandmother. We found a shovel and a garbage bag, inserted the rotting carcass into it, and moved to deposit it in her garbage can. “Oh, no,” she said, “I cannot stomach the thought of a dead cat lying in my garbage for a week until the next garbage day. Please, will you take care of it for me?”
So, helpfully, we agreed. We stuffed the body in the trunk and drove away, hoping to find another garbage can nearby. We forgot, however, that the cat was already several days dead and rotting. After driving for several minutes, the four of us realized that the cat, on this hot Los Angeles day, reeked mightily. We had to pull over on the side of the road.
None of us wanted to leave the carcass lying on the side of the road. I mean, we had agreed to give it a proper send-off of some sort, after all. So Elder Reed helpfully suggested that we just shut the trunk on the tail of the stiff, dead cat, and find a good place to dispose of the body. We all thought that was a capital idea, considering the reek permeating the cabin. So after slamming shut the trunk, we now had a large, white garbage bag flapping in the breeze behind our vehicle, containing a vague silhouette of a cat with jaws agape and limbs outstretched in protest at the indignity it was suffering.
“That just won’t do,” said Reed. We looked at him quizzically, and he tugged at the garbage bag. Now, the upside-down, stiff, dead cat was proudly displayed hanging morbidly from the trunk of our vehicle. “That’s better,” said Reed, and we all got back into the car and drove off, much happier with the reduction in olfactory obnoxiousness.
And it came to pass that we did not find any convenient dumpster on our route back to the mission home. We eventually pulled up to a stoplight, and a neighboring van driver motioned us to roll down the passenger-side window.
“Hey, buddy,” he said, “Do you know you gots a cat stuck to your car?”
“Say what?” said Reed, sitting in the passenger seat. “Are you sure?”
“Lemme check,” said the van driver, who backed up, looked at the tail end of our car, then drove back to the stoplight. “Yeah, you gots a dead cat hangin’ out de trunk your car, man.”
“Thanks for telling us!” Reed replied as the light turned green and we sped away.
Well, within a few minutes, we entered the freeway. We realized that, at high speed, the trick of hanging the dead cat out the back was not helping with the smell very much. The odor just followed shadowed us in the draft of our vehicle, wafting in through the windows along with the usual city smells of urine, exhaust, and asphalt.
“I think I have a solution to the smell, and a name for our dead cat,” said Elder Eagar, our indomitable Zone Leader, as we sped at around 80MPH down Highway 101. “I hereby christen this cat ‘Skippy'”.
He pulled the trunk latch, and Skippy earned his name.