“Dad! Are you listening to me Dad? Will Mayfair Mac still go to heaven?” repeated Archie impatiently from atop Cassidy’s shoulders.
“And in bits?”
Cassidy moved his attention from the carnival of kites above.
“That’s a good question Archie”, he removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I think that God will make Mac whole again. He gives special attention to those who need Him the most. He can make them better. He can… love them better. I also believe that Mac will go to cat heaven because he was so loving to you guys and your mom.”
Amelia had always coached the boys with her own peculiar code of Catholic fervor; ‘Gucci Guilt’ he had unwisely called it during one of her final assaults. Although Cassidy was agnostic, he often found himself having to reinforce Amelia’s sermons with the boys, making his interpretations as wooly as possible.
“And in bits?” Archie was persistent.
“No Archie, as a regular cat, you know, a one piece kind of a Mac.”
“What, like fixed up?”
“No Archie, as he was before… before he wasn’t in bits.”
“God can do that?”
“Anything he puts his mind to”, said Cassidy lifting Archie off his shoulders. The little fella was getting big; soon too big to kiss goodnight.
He marveled at the resilience of his kids. They were regularly heaved between two haranguing households, they’d just lost their ‘Grumps’ and then came yesterday’s stunner from Mayfair Mac. Through it all they remained... what was the word his English beer buddy kept using? Chipper.
Through it all his boys remained chipper.
“Of course they have to do a pet funeral first” Daniel was all business “then a cat cremation.”
“Come on you two, more walk, less talk. You don’t want to be late for the game, do you?”
“What’s ‘cremation’ Danny?” asked Archie.
“They burn your body, make you into ashes. It gets you to heaven quicker.”
“They’re gonna set fire to Mac?”
Daniel rolled his eyes and snorted.
Cassidy recognized that grimacing grin as his own.
“First they put him into a cat coffin”
Mac in a box, thought Cassidy biting his lip.
“Mac in a what?” Daniel’s arched eyebrows, the tilt of his head, reminded Cassidy of his own Father’s.
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