There's a dead mole on the kitchen floor this morning. About the size of my palm and dark gray — its soft fur a marked contrast to the little pinkish paddle feet and bare tail. One of the cats must have brought it in and Skeezix, the teen-aged feral kitten who lives with us now, has been playing soccer with it for the last half hour.

I'm not shy about picking up the stray kidneys and live snakes that end up in the house. I've even caught terrified field mice with my bare hands and let them go in the garden. But somehow whole dead animals are too much for me. I'm going to end up putting a tupperware container over this mole and calling Tad, my favorite ex-boyfriend, to come deal with it for me. He likes it when my veneer of competence cracks and he gets to see the squeamish girl inside.

The mole is very dead. I didn't see him or her alive, so I don't have the contrast fresh in my mind, but when something is dead you feel an absence. The kind of absence that made me burst into tears on Saturday when I found my sweet cat Angus dead under my bed. When you've known and loved the departed, there's a lot of shock and disbelief to contend with. Angus had been under the bed all morning and I thought he was asleep. I sat on the couch paying bills and he was already dead. This makes me want to scream. When I finally realized something was wrong, that he'd been in the same position for too long, and got down on my knees to see what was the matter, I already knew and was trying not to know what I'd find. The glassy half-open eyes. The absence of my friend — no pricked ears at my closeness, no rise of breath. I touched him and he was stiff. I went outside and sobbed and sobbed. I called Tad and he came over. I called the vet because I couldn't figure out how he had died. There was a little blood on his mouth.

Tad pulled Angus's body out from under the bed by the tail, which seemed rude — cats really hate that. But Angus was nowhere near his body. We wrapped it in a tablecloth and Tad carried it, legs out stiff, onto the deck. Gracie and Sid came over to see what was going on and sniffed his fur for a little while, and then walked away. Tad dug the hole and I cried.

I love all my cats and I don't want to have favorites, but Angus was my favorite, I couldn't help it. From the time he fit into my jacket pocket on the way home from the shelter, I have cherished him. We arranged the tablecloth around his face so dirt wouldn't get into his eyes and I filled in the hole with soil and tears.

Tad kept me company for a while. After he left, I found Angus's pink collar out on the road — on the yellow line right in front of my driveway. People zoom down this part of Newtown Rd. as if it were a roller coaster. Angus was hit so hard that the collar had lost its clasp and bell.

I couldn't find them anywhere.