As I stepped through the front door and kicked the dirty snow off my boots, I listened for Cricket's childlike, welcoming howl. My cat had obviously not heard me pull into the driveway, and was likely in a deep sleep on one of our bedspreads upstairs. Entering the living room, I checked his usual perches including underneath the glass table in front of the woodstove. I was momentarily fooled by my brother's Timberland workboot, but Cricket was not there. I looked to the stairs, expecting to hear the familiar clicking of his overgrown toenails against the wooden steps. Cricket did not come down to greet me. I was unsurprised - I knew where I would find our 19-year-old Siamese.

Throwing my dufflebag on the couch and my jacket on the floor, I proceeded to the kitchen - as usual, the only warm room in the house. I did not find Cricket napping in front of the heater under the sink, his dark tail lazily flopping side to side, his whiskers resting on his brown paws. Nor was he sitting atop the kitchen table, basking in the afternoon sun. I walked over to our refrigerator and cautiously opened the freezer door. On the second shelf from the bottom sat a square cardboard box, about the size of two shoeboxes, neatly wrapped in brown packaging tape. Careful not to touch the box, I leaned my head into the freezer and read the permanent marker writing on top: "Cricket Herron."

Two weeks before I arrived home, my older sister called and told me in a shaky voice that Cricket had stopped eating and had collapsed on the kitchen floor. Wrapped in blankets, he was taken to the vet, where he was diagnosed with liver failure and "put to sleep." A few days later, my father dropped by the vet to pick up the cardboard box with Cricket's frozen body inside. With four inches of snow on the ground, the task of burying him had to be postponed; so, Cricket was returned to the house and placed on the second shelf from the bottom in the freezer, next to the HŠagen Dazs Vanilla Ice Cream and underneath the Lender's Bagels. I knew that was where I would find him when I arrived home for Thanksgiving break.

With vapor rising from the box to my face, my stomach churned and my mind raced frantically to past moments. I felt a danger standing there in the kitchen, captivated by my cat's frozen coffin. There was a fear that each recovered memory would usher me further into an all-consuming anarchy of depressive thoughts. But the horror of this emotional abyss was coupled with a queer sense of comfort that I felt as I eyed the cardboard box before me. While during that first day I opted for warm soda rather than having to open the freezer door again, my anxiety steadily slackened over the next few days. Lonely in the kitchen late at night, I found myself opening the freezer for a spoonful of ice cream, teetering on the edge of the abyss, but somehow warmed by Cricket's frozen corpse. I began hunting out his usual napping spots, taking comfort in pinching together small clumps of his shed fur; I would raise the locks of cat hair to my face, trying to recapture a fragrance that would aid my frantic search for forgotten moments. I am dumbfounded by the perverse comfort I felt from Cricket's continued corporeal presence in the house. Although the idea of the spirit abandoning the physical body provides a sort of rational solace, when faced with Cricket's body I was more comforted to think that he was somehow still there.

Having a 19-year-old Siamese cat frozen in a cardboard box in your freezer - and taking comfort in that fact - somehow becomes a far more unpleasant and awkward thought when you realize that other people are aware of the situation. A dead body in the fridge seems a bit more normal if there is no one you have to look in the eye who knows about it. But with my older brother and sister and myself casually reaching for ice cubes or pulling out frozen chicken breasts for dinner (a sickening image in retrospect), the unsettling reality was unavoidable. Somehow, the awkward tension of our shared compliance with the situation had to be released. So we cracked jokes. Before my sister arrived home from New Jersey, my brother and I laughed at the idea of telling her to grab the apple pie out of the freezer and heat it up. I giggled when he suggested we take Cricket out and defrost him for one final family portrait. These were nervous jokes and laughs, simply relieving us of a shared discomfort. We became more embarrassed of our disdainful irreverence with each passing joke.

After a few days at home and a slight thaw outside, my family realized that we should bury Cricket before we left for our Thanksgiving trip to my grandmother's. After all, an unexpected power outage while we were gone would make for an unpleasant return. We pondered where we would bury him, where would be most meaningful and appropriate. I suggested that we bury Cricket in the driveway underneath the cars, where he used to keep himself warm with the cooling engines during winter excursions. Everyone smiled, and some of the awkwardness dissipated as I blushed for having made another joke. We ended up choosing a corner of the backyard. My brother went to get a shovel from the basement, and my father and sister went outside. The only one remaining in the house, I opened the freezer door and slid the cardboard box into my hands. With the care of a child who tends to a bird's broken wing, I carried Cricket outside. In the cold, black soil we laid him to rest.

When someone asks me to tell about my cat, I feel paralyzed by the failure of words to describe him. I find myself relying on funny and heartwarming anecdotes that fall frustratingly short of conveying his spirit, like a stick-figure caricature of something alive and three-dimensional. Cricket embodies so many parts of my life that the phrase, "My cat died," does not do justice to his significance. He is my childhood. He is my mother, who died almost a year ago. He is my home. With his death, all seem a little further from my reach.

After I loaded the car to return to school at the end of Thanksgiving break, I walked to the corner of the yard where you could still see the freshly packed brown earth. I stood for a moment, strangely comforted to be next to his grave. As the memories began to flood my mind, I walked away, careful not to let them consume me.

Christopher F. Herron is a member of the Amherst College Class of 1998.