Thursday, August 21, 2008

The Party Snacks (True Story)


Jan and Marie would celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary and a lot of guests had been invited for a tremendous party at their home. Fine snacks and delicacies had been ordered at a catering firm. These were delivered during the day and were intended to be served in the late evening. Jan didn’t have enough storing space to keep them cool and fresh, so he decided to store them in the garage (in the Neteherlands garages are mostly cool due to the cool weather) covered by plastic sheet, until the time was there to serve them. So far so good. After an hour or so Jan went to the garage to get a hammer to attach some decorations on the wall. He was astonished to see that Pedro, the cat, was eating from the delicacies!! Luckily enough, only a small part was eaten and Jan put the parts eaten at in the garbage container, and chased the cat away out of the garage.

That evening they had a wonderful party and nobody worried about this small cat-incident. When all guest had left Gerrie, Jan and Marie’s daughter helped to clean up the mess and Jan said: put those clean bowls and plates in the garage, then the caterer will come and collect them tomorrow. Gerrie started to bring the things there. After a while Jan and Marie heard a loud scream from the garage, and they hurried to see what was going on there. They didn’t need to ask because they saw immediately Pedro lying before the garage door. The poor animal was dead. Jan was the only one knowing about the illegal nibbling by the cat, and after the family recovered a bit after the shock, he told what happened. The family was struck by a second shock: everybody had eaten from the snacks, and Jan decided to call all guests out of their sleep to tell them what danger was threatening them. He himself didn’t feel sick already but he decided to go to the hospital first thing in the morning. Some of the guests couldn’t wait and went that same night. It was an awful night!

That morning the little family went outside to get into the car to the hospital. Jan had wrapped some of the leftovers in plastic so that they could be analysed, you never can tell. Also the dead cat had been put into a board box, maybe the doctors could use the remains to investigate. Then the neighbour came outside and asked “Well, folks, did you have a nice party yesterday night?” Jan started to think: don’t come up with complaints about the noise, we can’t use that now. But the neighbour said: “I knew your were having a party and didn’t want to disturb the festivity. But when I came home after walking the dog I saw how your cat was hit by a car, the poor animal was dead, and I couldn’t do anything but laying him down before your garage door, then you would see him after the party without startling the visitors going home, they wouldn’t see it in the dark”.

This story is true, only the names and cause of celebration have been changed.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

brilliantly conceived. i've heard similar urban legend versions of a dead-cat story before. ouf, you said it's true... well then, it's a perfectly told tale.
the great news is everyone will remember the party. how many parties have you gone to that you've already forgotten? the near-poisoning party will always be a bright memory gem.
especially for the drunken party guest who ran over the stupid cat.

Anonymous said...

p.s. i love being unaware of my confusion.
it takes the responsibility away from "knowing."

Anonymous said...

Wow - how odd to have such coincidence.