I woke up to find that my brother had left messages on all of my phones. (Three including home.) So I knew something relatively urgent had happened. When I got a hold of him, he started the conversation with "something bad has happened." At that moment lots of terrible things raced through my mind, but if any of those things did happen, I doubt he would have been so calm on the phone. Then he started to say "Mochi..."

Mochi is my sister-in-law's cat. Before they had Sarah I used to say that he was their dry run at parenthood. After Sarah was able to run about, Mochi became her new friend and companion. She renamed him "Bee" and would squeal with delight everytime Mochi would rub up against her. He got lots of hugs from her.

At that point I figured that he was probably really sick or something because lately he has been experimenting with eating dirt. Sweet cat, but not very bright. The actual news turned out to be much worse, Mochi was hit by a truck. Neither my brother or sister-in-law were able to leave work, so my brother had to call up his friend (who had the day off for elections) to help him out.

Let me just say that, I think that's a good friend who will scrape up your wife's cat off the side of the road, bag him, and ice him (especially when he is not a cat person himself).

Right now, Mochi is in the patio of my parents' house iced in a large cooler. Tomorrow, they're going to take him to the vet to be cremated. My brother was calling not only to break the news, but also trying to convince me to come over this evening. I told him that I'd be too weirded out with Mochi's dead body sitting in the cooler in the patio. Mochi was part of the family, so for me (at least) it's one step (granted a rather large step) away from being a person in a cooler in our patio.

I adored Mochi. And even though I'm being pretty light about it here, I know if I go back to my parents' place, it'll really hit me. And I just don't want to do that right now.