backforthmenu Names. “Andy, some woman named Pat Haven called for you.” “Who is that?” I’m at work. I’m annoyed. I’m annoyed by work. “I don’t know, here’s the number.” I don’t call her back. I never call anyone back. Later in the day, I find the note in my pocket. Pat Haven? I call her back. “Hello, Pet Heaven.” After tip-toeing around my feelings for a bit, the female voice lets me know my cat was cremated and waiting there for me. And that it would be $90—cash—to pick him up. Before 3pm, please. It was 2:50. “Can I come tomorrow?” He was, after all, dead. I knew he was dead, I’d said my goodbyes at the vet a few days earlier. How many cats do you know that last 16 years? “Yes, of course. We’re open at 10am.” Pet Heaven, lunch break. There’s no real entrance, just a cardboard sign on a fence outside the cemantary; “office this way,” and a gravel pathway to the rear of two ramshackle buildings. The grounds are huge, and straight out of 1955. Trailer park style. Dusty. Lots of bad pet names on different style grave markers. Heavily weathered pet statues watch me enter the front door. An old, make-up caked woman—also straight outta ‘55—greets me. “I’m here for my cat.” “Name?” “Andy.” She searches the crowded shelves. “No Andys.” “I’m sorry... that’s my name—the cat was Ravel.” She eyeballs me over her spectacles, then begins to search again. Soon she hands me a small, white, rectangular, plastic case. On it a medical style label that seems to be holding the lid on. It states, simply; Razel, Cat. “That’s him—all of him.” She says, answering the unasked question. “Oh. Are the animals cremated on the grounds?” “Yes... of course, there’s a crematorium out back. And they’re each cremated separately.” I grab a business card on the way out. Why? In a basket next to them is a pile of bright yellow “Pet Heaven” keychains. She calls after me, “I’m sorry about your pet.” “Thank you.” Outside, I look through holes in the fence and check the yard behind the building. No bodies laying about. Nothing laying about—just another hand-made sign; “employees only”. The crematorium looks like a large air-conditioner with a door and a 30 foot smoke stack. I notice heatwaves rising off its roof, puffs of black smoke drift from the stack. In the corner of the lot, some 50 yards from the main building is another trailer with bars on the windows. It’s humming. A freezer? I drive home, put the cat on the shelf and head back to work. 3/4/97