The Tomb of the Unknown Kitty in Vestal

This week I was thinking back to the times where I myself became a Strange But True story on my morning show. Two days ago, I wrote an article about Possum Pond in Endicott. If you miss that article you can read it here. 

Well before Possum Pond, there was the Tomb of the Unknown Kitty. In the mid 90’s I dated a woman named Linda. She lived in Vestal with one of her two daughters. Her daughter had a cat named Bugsy. Bugsy was an indoor cat for the most part, but he loved to go outside. Even if he got outside, he would come home every night.

Even if we tried to keep him in the house, he would literally jump off furniture, on to your back, over your shoulder, and out the door. When Bugsy came back home and wanted to come inside, he would sit on the windowsill and stare in the window until somebody came and let him in.

One day Bugsy got out, and he didn't come home that night. We figured he would come home the following night, but he didn't. He didn't come home tonight after that either. We decided to start looking for the cat. Days went by and there was no sign of Bugsy. The one day while I was driving down the Vestal Parkway near Mapes Auction House, I saw an orange tabby dead on the side of the road. Mapes was only a few blocks from Linda’s house. I went to her father's and borrowed his pickup truck, grab the shovel, and went back down the parkway. I picked up the cat and I thought for sure it was Bugsy.

I drove back to Linda's house and started to dig a grave. Before we put the cat in the grave, we all gathered around. As I went to use the shovel to pick the cat up, we noticed something. This cat appeared to have testicles. Bugsy was fixed. So we think it may have been someone else's cat.

We were debating what to do. There was no way I can bring the cat back down and put it back on the parkway where I found it, and I had already dug a grave, so we decided to bury the cat. I figured I would talk about it on the air in case somebody in that area was also missing an orange tabby. Maybe when cats die, that area fills with fluid or something, I don't know. But on the stone we placed over the grave we wrote “The Tomb of the Unknown Kitty”.