What we don't know can't hurt us

Keeping Stock has a post entitled "Did we need to know?"

I immediately knew it referred to the headlines about the voice recorder on the Airbus that went down off Perpignan. I had exactly the same response.

As an obsessive truth seeker I still attempt to instil in my children the idea that sometimes, just occasionally, the truth is better left alone. There can be now earthly good in revealing or speaking it. What you don't know won't hurt you.

Once upon a time that sentiment got me into more trouble than I cared for.

One morning I discovered a dead but intact black cat on the grass verge outside our home. I knew it didn't belong to any of my immediate neighbours. Dilemma. Do I leave it there for the unfortunate owner or my own children to discover? Wouldn't it be preferable for the owner to be left thinking maybe the cat had just wandered off to a new home? Wouldn't that be a much kinder outcome? Yes, I decided. So I carried the corpse into my backyard, dug a hole and buried it. I know, I know. Who did I think I was interfering like that? And worse, what thought had I given to what might happen next....

My first mistake was to mention it to my neighbour, who wondered what I was having to dig such a deep hole for. I should have lied and said I was burying our cat. Then it would have gone no further. Except I would have had to kill our cat.

About three days later, early in the evening, the phone rang. It was my in-the-know neighbour saying she had been visited by a young woman looking for her cat. She had told her I might know something about it. Shit. Panic stations. It hit me. The owner will think I have run over the cat with my car and tried to hide the evidence.

There was a knock on the door. David answered it. Then I could hear him telling the distraught young woman he hadn't seen hide nor hair of said beast (following my original instructions to a tee, poor man). I could only take this subterfuge for seconds.

Actually, I saw it, I confessed, approaching the front door. Then I had to go further and admit to telling my husband to lie, given his red-faced presence in the hallway. I stutteringly told her I had found it on the grass verge and it had probably been hit by a car. But that it was in good condition so probably suffered a head injury and didn't suffer (??) And how I hadn't wanted her (how did I know the owner was a 'her'?) to find it. On and on digging a deeper and deeper hole. Do you want to see the hole ...grave, sorry? Oh my God. I had dragged our unused dog kennel over the top to stop him from digging up the carcass. I had HIDDEN it.

She was crying quite hard by now. I was feeling like the lowest of lowest, a complete heel, an utter crock. She left quite quickly, understandably.

Sometimes it's best to let nature take its course I think. Next time I discover a dead cat I will carry it around every home in the vicinity until I find the poor, unsuspecting soul, possibly a child, about to be confronted with its lifeless, no more, friend.