A lady seeking advice from “Prudie” of the Dear Prudence column on what to do about the accidental death of her neighbor’s cat that she ran over, was advised to keep the crime to herself. It appears the neighbor is a callous old man that “complains about every little thing, and calls the police any time there is loud music in the neighborhood or if there are ‘suspicious-looking’ kids hanging out too close to his house. He once tried to sue a neighbor over tree branches falling into his yard.”
The writer defended her actions saying that the incident occurred in her driveway and that it “was well after midnight and [she] didn’t see him until it was too late”. She told her husband about it and they colluded to conceal the unfortunate incident.
Clearly this is a roll reversal where bad luck comes to those who have had a black cat cross their paths. But what makes me suspicious of this woman’s story is that it “was well after midnight” when she came home and “didn’t see [the cat] until it was too late”. May she have been in an inebriated state? Did she really run over the cat or did they get their vengeance on this apparently frightening old man by taking it out on his feline companion?
There is a remote possibility that the old man was simply mean to the cat too and rather than go on living under such conditions she committed suicide by road kill. But this scenario in unlikely because as the writer to Dear Prudence explains, he has been “going door to door, … asking about his kitty” and “has put up posters offering a reward”.
“Prudie” has sided with the husbands position to keep the incident concealed which leads me to conclude that Prudence is the neighbor that the old man complained about tree branches falling in his yard. I am also led to conclude that the writer WAS out drinking that night because her husband was having an affair with Prudie, not knowing of course Prudie’s name in real life.
If the old man ever gets wind about what really happened we could see the lady who gives advice to other people and passes herself off as Dear Prudence seeing posters of herself hanging in the neighborhood, and not necessarily by the old curmudgeon.
Such a mystery! Could the cat have purposely jumped in front of the inebriated woman’s car? I would think that not even cats want to live with grumpy old men.
I’m gonna go with suicide by inebriated driver. It’s not like cats have thumbs, so their end of life options are fairly limited. Rarely do you hear about a cat OD’ing on prescription drugs.