When forgetting to feed the neighbor’s cats
All of us know what it’s like to have neighbors. They always seem to want something from you — and nine times out of 10, what they want is for you to feed their pesky felines when they’re out of town. I know you’ll find it impossible to say no when the Johnsons ask you to feed their three cats over the weekend. I also know that while the Johnsons are having a blast in upstate New York, you’ll be busy forgetting all about feeding Frisky, Tuna and Mr. Whiskers — until the night before the Johnsons return, when you wake up in a cold sweat over your cat-sitting faux pas. But don’t panic! If you follow these five simple steps, the Johnsons will never know that you forgot to feed their cats.
1. Conduct a neighborhood investigation to determine how many lives (of nine) each cat had before you starved it to death
It is obviously safe to assume that Frisky, Tuna and Mr. Whiskers are now in the late stages of rigor mortis due to your neglect. However, there is a small chance that they will be able to use their cat magic to recover if they have not already died eight times before starving to death. So, go undercover and interview everyone in the neighborhood to find out if the cats have ever fallen to the ground from a high place, or gotten hit by a car, or licked a fraying electrical wire. Since cats are reckless little demons, you will probably discover that they are dead for real and you should proceed with number two to five, found below.
2. Eliminate all witnesses
No one in the neighborhood can know that you have murdered the Johnson family’s cats, so you must make sure no one has seen their decaying corpses. Be on the lookout for Little Kimmy, the neighborhood girl the Johnsons are paying to bring in their mail, and Old Man Jameson, the curmudgeon who takes a daily stroll around the neighborhood. Both of these characters get a real kick out of peeking in through the Johnsons’ windows, and you need to go to any lengths necessary to convince them that they haven’t seen a thing. Remember, bribes can go a long way — the higher your body count, the more witnesses you’ll have to account for.
3. Dispose of the bodies
The only way to clear yourself of all suspicion is to make everyone think the Johnson family’s cats are missing, not dead. You must make it look like Frisky, Tuna, and Mr. Whiskers ran away from home, and that is why they are nowhere to be found. First, you must dissolve their remains in a vat of acid and throw that acid into a swamp. Then, you must arrange the Johnson residence to look like it was just left by three feline escape artists. Write a note in childlike print that says: “The catnip is always greener on the other side of the fence,” sign it with a pawprint and leave it next to the litterbox. Remove all toys and food the cats would have brought with them on their escape mission. Open a browser window on the Johnson family computer with the Google query, “How to open a door without opposable thumbs.” Wear gloves when completing these tasks so you do not leave fingerprints, as cats don’t have fingers and this would surely give you away.
4. Launch a nationwide search for the “runaway” cats
Once you have painted Frisky, Tuna and Mr. Whiskers as escapists, foreign investment in their fate by launching a search for the “missing” pets. Put up posters with their little cat faces on them. Walk the streets calling their names. Call the police, bring them to the scene of the crime and cry hysterically until they put in a police report documenting the cats as runaways. Go to Washington, D.C. and break into the FBI headquarters, refusing to leave until they take your case. Then, book interviews on as many daytime talk shows as possible — the media will be desperate to talk to you, since you have launched the first ever FBI missing cat case. You must beg the American people to find Frisky, Tuna and Mr. Whiskers at any cost. Heck, you could even suggest foul play may have been involved! Once you make this much of an effort to look for the cats, the Johnson family will never suspect that you let them starve to death with no food for two whole days.
5. Live a lie forever
While the above steps must all be completed before the Johnson family arrives back home, the talk show appearances, police search and FBI case will go on for years and years. Each day, you will have to live within the fiction you have created as you ask the American government and people to spend their time and money looking for cats that you neglected and then disintegrated in a vat of acid. On the outside, you will seem like an exceptional neighbor. But on the inside, you will die a little each day and eventually lose sight of who you are. The line between reality and make-believe will begin to blur in your mind, and at night you’ll be unable to escape the hungry cries of Frisky, Tuna and Mr. Whiskers’ ghosts. But what choice did you have? This is the price you pay for living next door to a family that has cats and goes on vacation.
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