Man buries his cat thinking he was killed in RTA

This is what I would describe as another cat burial mixup arising out of a road traffic accident in which a black cat was killed. Nathan Sonoras was incredibly distraught when he saw a black cat on the road. He was convinced that it was his cat, Loki. It was in the evening when Nathan took a drive to his girlfriend’s house in Essexville, Michigan, USA, when he noticed a small dark object in the road and had a look.

He was convinced that he was looking at the lifeless body of his beloved black cat Loki. He said that every aspect of the appearance of the cat on the road matched that of Loki. He started to cry and yell because he believed that somebody had hit his cat and not stopped.

A Bay County Sheriff’s Office deputy happened to pull up and ask what was going on and he gave Nathan an evidence bag for the dead cat. Nathan meet up with his girlfriend and they took the deceased cat back to her house where they buried him/her in the backyard.

They spent some time at the grave reminiscing about Loki, thinking of the good times and sharing memories. The next morning Nathan took his dad to work. He was telling his dad about the sad news and heard a cat meowing. He turned and noticed that it was Loki. End of story but beginning of conundrum. Whose cat did he bury?

Video version of the story

Comment

As I recall this kind of mixup was happened in the past. It’s an interesting situation because as outsiders we wonder how a person can fail to recognise their cat. However, perhaps under the distress of the moment (and it must have been very stressful and distressing) it is possible to make a mistake because Nathan seems to be a very sensible person.

We are not told anything about the ownership of the cat that Nathan buried. We don’t know if he or she was a stray cat or someone’s companion. Maybe it’ll come out in the wash but I doubt whether we will hear about it. Perhaps Nathan can find out and tell the owner where their cat is if the cat has an owner. If this happens, perhaps they can exhume the body and take it back to the owner for, I would hope, cremation.

In the meantime, Nathan is going to make sure that Loki is identified with a tracking microchip and perhaps a collar. That, at the end of the day, is the way to prevent these events happening.

Reported on Michigan Live website.

UPDATE: Laurie Cavanaugh Bobskill has had a similar experience:

“Michael, this happened to me with one of the ferals I fed at work. He was coal black and even had the tail kink Blackie had. I wept and another employee hugged me. We put him in my car and I drove home after work and buried him.

Two days later, Blackie was waiting for dinner. I advertised in the local paper and put up signs in case the cat who was killed had a grieving family but never heard a word.

It took three years to trap Blackie to the. Because he was fiv+ I took him home. He was so feral that it was a year before he would jump up on furniture and look out the window. Slowly he became a loving cat. We had him for 10 years. I still cry when I think of holding him while he purred when we had to put him down because of lymphoma.

Blackie was what we call a “heart cat.””

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