And there go all four of my readers ...

I write this with much consternation. I have a feeling I may lose at least two of the four people who read this blog, so that's quite unfortunate. But may the truth set you free.

I was driving to the library tonight while on the phone with my mom. She was giving me the scoop from the last week. As I mentioned in the photo essay, we are the proud parents of two new kittens, Bubbles and NoName.

Sadly, Bubbles, the white boy kitten, has died.

We're not sure how, but someone left the garage door open one night when it was pretty chilly, and when the girls went out to check on the kittens the next morning, Bubbles was dead.

Death is not new to us, or to our pets. I had my first brush with the nether world when I was in third grade and my cat Kelly got hit by a driver who didn't know how to parallel park. Since then, we've had many deaths by car accidents, two deaths by heat stroke and one death by being eaten alive. Sorry, but we have!

My mom was telling me how Lexie had been carrying Bubbles like he was a baby, rocking him and cooing to him, bouncing him up and down, making his little mouth drop open a little bit. And I smiled and awwed to myself because I love hearing stories about Lexie being sweet (possibly because they're so few and far between). And if anything, I reasoned, Bubbles had been loved to death, and what a way to go, right?

These thoughts were interrupted as my mom continued, wondering aloud how she ended up with a child who had such a need for attention and such a sick sense of humor. "I don't encourage her," my mom lamented. "I tell her to take it outside, and I don't laugh at her."

"Excuse me?" I asked, feeling like I had missed something.

I had indeed missed something. These loving acts of snuggling with the kitten, waving its droopy paw at everyone in the family who passed by, shoving the hapless Bubbles in my anxiety-ridden sister Julie's face - they were all a ruse.

Lexie was doing all of these things AFTER THE KITTEN HAD DIED.

After the kitten had died, but before rigor mortis had set in, apparently.

This is worse than the time last fall when another kitten died - I can't remember which one, or the cause of death for that matter - and Lexie's best friend Hannah's mom (following?) decided the poor kitten needed a proper burial. She came by the house to pick up the kitten, but before she left, decided to step in and say hi. Amy was the only one home, so she stood in the doorway, trying not to die, as Hannah's mom chatted amiably, HOLDING A ZIPLOCK BAGGIE WITH THE KITTEN INSIDE OF IT.

These are the things that give you nightmares, and my house is full of them.