His First Grave Went Unused

When I moved out, the house felt emptier for my mom—one less kid to fill the silence. To cope, she brought home a Siamese kitten named Joxcer, pronounced “jock-sir,” after a character from her and Dad’s favorite show, Xena: Warrior Princess. He was a nearsighted little guy with crossed blue eyes, always kneading someone’s lap to soothe his loneliness. He’d pounce on anything that moved—string, shadows, my shoelaces when I visited—until most of us kids left home. After that, he grew quieter, his prowls around the house slowing to a mope.


Enter Dargo, a rescue kitten Mom adopted to perk Joxcer up. Dargo was a mystery—big, clumsy, maybe deaf at first, ignoring his name until one day he just got it. He never mastered the litter box, planting all four paws inside yet missing every time. He ballooned to triple Joxcer’s size, a lumbering teddy bear of a cat, leaving the senior Joxcer as the only one nimble enough to leap onto counters and tables.


One summer evening, that agility got Joxcer into trouble. Dad had left a bowl of diluted Roundup—weed killer he’d mixed for the yard—in the sink, a loose lid barely covering it. Joxcer, ever curious, knocked it off and drank who-knows-how-much. He didn’t make it off the counter. When Mom got home from work, she found him curled up by the sink, cold and still. No breath, no pulse—just a stiff, room-temperature body. She called me sobbing, unable to face it alone.


I lived ten minutes away and raced over. Joxcer looked gone—limbs locked, eyes half-open, no sign of life. I’d seen enough dead animals to know rigor mortis when I saw it, or so I thought. Mom couldn’t bear to touch him, so I took over. Dad’s boot collection had piled up giant boxes in the garage; I grabbed one, lined it with Joxcer’s favorite fuzzy blanket, and gently lifted him into it. He felt weightless, like a husk of the cat who’d demanded lap time every visit.


I carried the open box to the backyard, past Mom’s flower garden where Joxcer used to sniff the blooms when he’d sneak out. Behind the roses, I picked a spot and started digging. The hole had to be deep—three feet, maybe more—so no one would disturb it if the garden grew. I’d dug plenty of holes over the years; this one took barely twenty minutes, but every shovelful felt heavier than the last.


Before closing the box, I scooped him up one last time. I wanted to feel his fur, to remember how he’d park on my lap and purr like a motor. My hands cradled him—one under his body, the other stroking his head—and I froze. A vibration. Faint, impossible, but there. He was purring. I pressed my ear to his chest—shallow breaths, a weak heartbeat. His eyes fluttered open, and a tiny mew escaped his throat.


“Mom!” I yelled, bolting back to the house with Joxcer in my arms and the boot box banging against my leg. She ran into the kitchen, eyes wide, as he mewed again, louder now. We wrapped him in the blanket and sped to the vet. The doc said the pesticide had knocked him into a deep stupor—slowed his metabolism to a crawl, mimicking death. A flush of fluids, a night of observation, and he was back, no worse for wear.


Joxcer lived another year and a half after that, ruling the counters and kneading our laps like nothing had happened. Dargo stayed his giant shadow, and Mom’s garden got a new rose bush—right over that empty hole.