Two brothers, John and Richard, lived in the same town. John with his 12-year-old cat, and Richard with their 88-year-old mother. John’s whole life was his cat. He never went anywhere without her. One day he was faced with a terrible decision. He had to go to England on business for his company and he could not take the cat into England without having to quarantine her for 14 days. He wouldn’t do that, so he was faced with either losing his job or leaving his cat.
Finally, he decided to trust his brother with the cat for the week he would be gone. He gave Richard detailed instructions, schedules, food, etc. Finally, he flew to London and called Richard every few hours to make sure Gracie the cat was okay. Four days of this went by, and John was really getting to be a pain in the neck.
On the fifth day when he called, John asked Richard how Gracie was, and Richard told him, “Gracie is dead!” Well, as you can imagine, John nearly had a heart attack.
When he recovered, he said to Richard, “That was the most cruel thing I ever heard. You know how much I loved that cat, why couldn’t you have broken it to me gently? You know, like when I called, you could have said something like, ‘well, she’s OK but she is up on the roof.’ And then when I called the next time, tell me ‘oh oh, bad news, she fell off the roof and she’s at the vet’s.’ And then the next time break the news that she passed away. At least I would have been a little prepared for the bad news.”
“Yes, you are right, John. I am sorry for being so heartless.”
John accepted Richard’s apology for being so uncaring and then said, “Oh, by the way, how’s Mother?”
Richard then said, “Well, John, she’s OK, but she’s on the roof!”