What I am offering here is a free story. Feel free to share this story with your friends, print it out, or whatever. All I ask is that you do not claim authorship rights to it. And please do not spoil it for others by repeatedly flagging it as inappropriate so that it automatically gets removed, such that they may not enjoy it.

For those of you who have been perusing the free section of Craigslist the past few days, you may have seen my earlier post for the free mummified cat. For those of you who haven’t, I assure you that you did read that correctly: I was indeed giving away a mummified cat, more of which I’ll come to later. However, several people (or a few people repeatedly) decided that for some reason my post violated Craigslist policy and kept flagging it so that it automatically got removed. There were no vulgarities in my ad, I was not misrepresenting anyone, I did not have anything to do with the demise of the poor cat, so I really did not violate any policy. But apparently some people didn’t like the idea of some guy trying to give away a free mummified cat on the internet. Perhaps they were jealous that they themselves didn’t have anything so interesting to give away, or they felt like they were missing out on something. Or maybe they, too, had a mummified cat and didn’t want anyone else to be able to enjoy the pleasures of such a quiet and low-maintenance pet. Whatever the reason, some folks felt impelled to flag my post and deprive others of the joy of reading the story.

As of now, someone has actually claimed the free mummified cat, so I can no longer give him away. However, what I can offer you is the story of the cat and of the posting. I received many responses for the cat, some of which I’ll share with you later. But for now, let me tell you (or re-tell for some) how I came across the mummified cat.

It started yesterday, which was a day to clean the yard. I had been avoiding doing that for quite some time. The top of the lawn was starting to touch the bottom of the tree branches, and the dogs had created so many piles of poop that I would be hard pressed to toss them all over into the neighbors yard without him noticing like I normally do. I figured I’d start with something easy—the scrap pile of wood and junk on the side of the house. I pulled back some old cardboard that was covering the wood, and that was when I uncovered the mummified remains of a cat. Apparently his foot had gotten stuck in the wood, and since there was other old stuff on top, either no one heard him yelping, or he was very quiet about it. Whatever it was that had happened, he sure used up all of his lives stuck there in that one spot. Maybe he should have traded one or two of those lives for a little bit of problem solving skills to figure out how to get himself unstuck.

Anyways, I felt quite like Indiana Jones, coming across the rare Cat Mummy of San Jose. It really was quite exciting—it’s not every day that you can claim an archeological find in your backyard, even if that claim is somewhat embellished. He wasn’t bloody or mangled or anything, so there really wasn’t that much gore in it at all. It was as if I was looking at a thing at the side show of a circus or at a museum. Of course I had to share this with someone, so I ran to get my wife. Of course, she probably was not the best person to share such a thing with, but none of my friends who could truly appreciate finding a mini-mummy were around. I asked her how her stomach was feeling, and, cautious as she always is about my out-of-the-blue queries like that, she asked what I meant. She thought maybe I had found the mouse that I accidentally let loose in the house last week (but that is another story—I suppose if the cat were not a mummy, we may not have had a problem with mice). I told her “No, this is much better than that...just follow me to the side yard!" which she warily did. I pulled back the old cardboard on top of the pile of wood and stood there, grinning like a five year old that just learned to tie his shoe as I showed her my prize find. "Look! A cat!" Of course, you can guess the reaction that any woman would have when being shown such a "treasure" in close proximity to where she lives. No amount of coaxing could get her to touch it, even with gloves on. After about 3 seconds of determining that it was a real cat and that this wasn't another one of my usual stupid jokes, she quickly made her way back to her gardening and insisted that I get rid of it.

“Hey, what do you think his name was?” I called out to her as she hurried away. She didn’t even turn around or reply.

I picked him up and noticed he was very light. He only weighed about two ounces or so, and really was nothing more than skin and bones. I had to run back to the garden and tell my wife excitedly "Bugs ate all of his guts!" She was not impressed.

Of course, I couldn't just throw such a prize away, so I took a few pictures of it. I actually did wrap him up in plastic and put him in the trash, but then I got to thinking--I've been reading the stuff that people have been giving away for free on Craigslist for a while, and I've been absolutely amazed at the crap I find here: half-used bottles of lotion, unusable tires, broken fish tanks, countless horrid couches, computers that would hardly be worthy of the dust they contain, and so on--I'm sure you've seen worse. But the amazing part is that I’m sure people actually take this stuff. So I figured, "Hey, some nut job out there has got to want a free mummified cat." I bet my wife that someone would reply and take it. She thinks I'm crazy. I told her that there are many, many people out there that are far crazier than I am.

So with that, I did advertise a free mummified cat here on Criagslist. I got almost 100 replies. Most of them were from people saying that although they did not want the cat, they truly enjoyed reading the story. One lady even admitted that she was a cat lover, yet still found the humor in the situation. Another guy said that he showed his girlfriend the pictures while she was talking on the phone, and she stopped her conversation to look, and just commented “That’s horrid!” (Just imagine how my wife is going to react when she finds the pictures still on her digital camera!). One other poor guy said that it helped cheer him up, as he had come to craigslist looking for some entertaining banter as his girlfriend had just gone back to her husband. His story almost made me feel compelled to go buy him a real cat to keep him company with his recent loss.

A charming couple, Dan and Dana, sent me a mail that was almost comprehensible. They used several words that I would be embarrassed to use in public, and they chastised me for humiliating the poor cat. Dan and Dara—I just wanted to thank you sincerely for your comments, and I wish you luck on your quest to one day becoming contributing members of intelligent society. One other lady said that she wished she could find me mummified. To that lady—if you will leave me your address, I promise that several years after I die and am buried, I will arrange to have someone dig me up and deliver me to your house. If you are also gone by that time, let me know a spouse or relative that may want to fulfill your wishes and I can go there instead. I just want to show that I really would go to great lengths to make folks happy.

Of course, I did get a couple people who wanted the cat. One guy wanted to coat him in plastic and dress him up in different funny costumes. I suppose that would make quite an interesting conversation piece on the living room table at dinner parties. The winning bidder was actually a lady who claimed to be a student of mortuary science. She offered to give me a crate of beer for the little fellow, but I told her I already had plenty of beer.

I conceded that maybe the pictures were what was causing folks to flag the message and I’ve decided to leave the pictures off of this post. They can be found if you search “mummified cat” in the rants and raves section though. I was going to try to tone them down a little bit by putting smiley faces on the cat with Photoshop, but I’m really not that artistically talented. I still don’t think the pictures are that terrible though. They weren’t any worse than the commercials of the emaciated kids with flies on their eyeballs that they show on TV trying to get you to send money. I wasn’t even asking for money for this cat. Maybe that’s what I should have done: “For only thirteen cents a day—that’s less than a cup of coffee—you could have prevented this cat from becoming a mummy.”

If you’ve enjoyed this story, please feel free to let me know. If not, let me know that too. I’d rather you just tell me what you don’t like about it, rather than flagging it as inappropriate, because I’m very stubborn. I’m sure that much unlike the cat, this story can have at least nine lives, so to the couple folks that abuse the flagging system, keep that in mind.