Two brothers, John and…

Two brothers, John and Richard lived
in the same town. John with his 12 year
old cat, 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 with 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 ok. 4 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 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 vets’. 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!”