Dead Cats Under the Porch

An urban myth I grew up with, which is largely true, is that cats do not want to die in plain sight and will go off somewhere in secret to shuffle off their mortal coil. I can’t tell you the number of times I learned first hand this was true. We had many outdoor “cat pets” when I was a kid (typically only one cat at a time was given the exalted position of “house cat” and got to live in luxury inside the house with the humans). When these outdoor cats’ time came and they didn’t show up for the daily back porch feeding for a few days, it was my job to go looking for their presumed dead bodies.