Poor old Helen in the kitchen this afternoon reporting the death of one of her litter overnight in her room. Somehow, in some unexplained way, Helen must have been woken at the time. The hardship and grief was evident as Helen told the sad tale. She had had no sleep since, she said. A slight, small bodied black and white cat named Carrie had been bullied by the two grey sisters and bitten by one of them, Helen suspected. The local Vet had found two bite marks on the throat. Carrie had not been one of Helen’s indoor cats, but once it had become weak after the attack Helen had brought it indoors. A couple of weeks before Carrie had gone missing. After a few days Helen had asked the neighbour in the four storey house next door whether she had been seen. The man had called her into his yard and indicated the side garden along the fence, where Carrie had taken herself. When Carrie saw Helen the cat emerged from the greenery and followed her home. The blood on the neck was immediately apparent; Carrie was suffering and Helen had needed to act immediately. As it was after 5PM the Vet on Onan Road was closed; Helen herself needed to attend to her feeding at that hour too. The Vet over at Franklin remained open until 8. Helen called Wanling who must have called Maureen. Soon the pair arrived at Helen’s door. A Grab was ordered; Helen provided the $250 deposit that would be required. As it turned out the Malay driver, overhearing the tale en route, declined the fare. In the mouth in particular, with the slightly protruding lower jaw sometimes when she spoke, Helen suggested the tendency of pet owners to assume the look of their companions. (Catladies were perhaps more prone than dog lovers.) Telling the tale of those recent days, at one point Helen reached for the bench-top behind to steady herself. Altogether Helen spent over $700 on Carrie, without being able to save the cat. The first stitches in the throat had been poorly done, a second Vet reported. There were a number of visits, without medication prescribed in this case. The local Vet had suggested rest and Helen’s good food would be the best remedy. Listening to Helen the memory returned of the Manuka honey Helen had asked for a few days prior. Helen had said one of her cats was poorly; after messaging she came to the door to collect the honey in her own container. At the time, when the recently purchased jar was returned with a good quart missing, there had been a thought to tick off Helen. Possibly Helen herself had a guilty conscience the next day when she enquired by another Whatsapp where the honey had been bought and what was the price. The morning of the death Helen had needed to work. Had it been up to her Carrie would have gone into the bin. Helen had done as much as she could; now the body needed no special attention. But of course that was not how Wanling and Maureen in particular saw matters. Maureen insisted she would arrange cremation for Carrie. As she had done on previous occasions, Maureen came over from her job at NTUC and argued the matter, crying and stamping her feet at the opposition with which she was met. She would pay the $75 charge herself; she would call the people and arrange to meet them; Helen did not need to be present. Maureen could not bear the thought of the garbage bin and landfill. It was unendurable. There was no arguing with her. It was strange to Helen, as she told it in the kitchen and then the dining-room in the following days. She herself loved Carrie very much. She had provided the best of care and the best of home-cooked food, as she always did with the cats, both indoors and out. Yet Maureen could pour out passionate feeling like that. (An innocent question, could it have been put, would have been what in the JW cosmology occurred in the case of cats in the afterlife. Certainly a Sufi like Zainuddin would envisage a reunion with loved pets.) Maureen had run over at the appointed time to meet the cremation people and Wanling too came across from her flat in Block 11 with a bouquet. Helen had missed all that over at her interviewing at East Coast. When Helen had set off for the bus for work she had noticed the Buddhist funeral down on the Void beneath Block 11. The all-white attire, music and chanting, the banners. Going out for lunch in the afternoon a few hours later, the funeral party had been just beginning to cart the various paper, the money and banners, over to the incinerator and cages provided on the grass. Old men, young and middle-aged girls had carried various items over in file along the sheltered walkway. At first it had appeared some kind of ritual and not a cleaning detail. By the side of the walkway near the cages someone had already brought a large blue cardboard motorcar that would have needed a pair to cart. A child of three or four might have been able to fit through the open windows of the car. In front headlights were rimmed with lines of red trim. The design of the car was from the mid-sixties, an early model in Singapore, presumably from the old Ford factory. It was only elderly craftsmen who produced these funerary items now. In Johor Bahru on Jalan Trus, opposite the old Chinese Temple, an elderly man could still be found out front working with his long brushes. Helen had missed the automobile. Naturally she well-knew the practice. Did an ang moh however know what the car was for?... After such a long term in the region, Helen had the cheek to ask. Helen laughed when she was told of the cloud-surfing hijinks in the afterlife. Thought at the time had been a child might have passed away. An elderly woman leaning against a pillar beneath Block 10 and looking out from there appeared to wipe a tear, before moving off. Because a child had died, the thought again. In fact, adults commonly took automobiles into the next world; and mobile phones now too, Helen added.
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