Should I kill the cat or the cleaner?

[Taxloss]

Ladies and gentlemen of the DU lounge, I present you with a bizarre ethical question.

I am presently writing a novel that can best be described as "darkly humorous". The basis of the plot is that the narrator is asked by an old college friend to look after his flat. The firend is an obsessively neat type who maintains a beautifully decorated minimalist flat. Needless to say, the narrator slowly and unintentionally trashes the flat.

However, I am at a plot crossroads. For the plot to work, something needs to die - either one of the two beautiful cats resident in the flat, or the flat's taciturn cleaner. I personally think the scene in which th cat dies is far funnier and would rather kill a cat than a human. However, my agent hates the cat killing and says that the readers would prefer me to kill the cleaner, which I think is a bit harsh for a blameless (if fictional) worker.

So, I want dead cat (spine broken by having lid of grand piano fall on it).

Agent wants dead cleaner (unbalanced by struggle, skull broken by awkward fall after slip on dirty floor).

I love cats. Cleaners are human. I'm torn.

Any thoughts?

[purr]

1. CLEANER!! the kitty shouldnt have to suffer

:)

[Taxloss]

5. It would be over very quickly for the moggy.

Neither victim would suffer, I might be arbitrarily cruel but I'm not a sadist. They're both killed without suffering.

[purr]

7. Drag out the fight with the cleaner..

make it a big suspense scene..

[ZombieNixon]

14. Have the cat fight the cleaner.

The cat can go all Matrix-style on the cleaner's ass. :evilgrin:

[purr]

15. bad ass kitty!

did you see my pic i posted in yer other thread?

[ZombieNixon]

18. I could lie and say "no."

:shrug:

[xmas74]

2. Kill everyone.

That would be cool.

[Taxloss]

8. I'm reminded of Blackadder.

Crone: You have three options.

Blackadder: Go on.

Crone: First, kill Bob.

Blackadder: Never!

Crone: Second, kill yourself!

Blackadder: Hmmmm ... what's the third?

Crone: Kill everyone else in the entire world!!!

Blackadder: You really are mad, aren't you?

[xmas74]

11. Yes, I really am mad.

And it would be the perfect ending. No dialogue, just silence. Everything drops off in midsentence.

[ZombieNixon]

3. The cleaner. Always. It's never the cats' fault.

Cats are beyond error. :P

[purr]

4. So true :)

:evilgrin:

[ZombieNixon]

6. Have you ever seen a cat make a mistake?

Even when it's obvious they fucked up, they still go about it with an air of "meant to do that." :P

[Taxloss]

13. I've met a couple of stupid and clumsy cats.

particularly an aged, filthy, deaf, senile cat called Scapin when I lived in France, who had to be bathed once a week, smelled pretty high most of the time, snored and drooled, and fell off things a lot in a distinctly un-graceful manner.

Lovely cat though. If you didn't mind getting a bit of drool on you. And the smell.

[Jamastiene]

9. Kill the cleaner.

Then the cat can lick the blood and guts. That way you can turn it into a Stephen King grade gross scene that will be worth reading. Thinking of a dead cat is just too much for me. My vote, definitely kill the cleaner. :P

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

10. I think you should kill off the obsessive flat owner.

Compulsively clean, minimalist people are far more killable, in the fictional sense, than cats. I would not find the death of a cat to be funny at all, but I could get a good chuckle out of the extirpation of a neat freak, especially if this were done in a weirdly messy way.

[Taxloss]

16. The neat freak gets his come-uppance.

the whole book is a careful dismantling of his view of the world. He's off dealing with his wife, who is divorcing him because of his neat-freakery. And she's taking him to the cleaners. Meanwhile, his flat is intended as a representation of his mindset slowly disintegrating as real life - the narrator - does his best to keep things in order.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

25. Then I guess you have to let him live.

But wouldn't it be far more disturbing to a neat freak to find a human corpse instead of a small, feline one in his sterile, minimalist flat, especially if said corpse had become dead in a very untidy fashion? I don't know if you can work in a wood-chipper (a la "Fargo"), but if the corpse of the cleaner could be found dismembered, or better yet, pureed, wouldn't that put your protagonist's knickers in a spectacular twist?

Just a thought -- but please don't kill the cat.

[Taxloss]

31. Maybe a capuccino maker could be employed

in sickening Bret Easton Ellis style horror. How on earth you could dispose of a corpse using a cappuccino maker, I don't know. A bit strong for my style though.

"Best take a look sarge. We're dealing with a maniac. This woman wasn't killed. She was percolated."

[Jamastiene]

20. Good idea.

I hate neat freaks too. I know exactly how to drive them mad. Just be myself. My sloppiness can drive a saint mad. :P

[leftofthedial]

12. cat

never pass up an opportunity to kill a cat

[Taxloss]

17. I really want to kill the cat (in FICTION, that is, I love cats.)

But my agent says that dead cats don't sell books, but dead cleaners are comedy gold. This is a moral position I am finding hard to triangulate.

[leftofthedial]

22. kill your agent too

[Book Lover]

19. Is your agent an author?

To hell with him. Kill the fucking feline and be felonious about it.

[Taxloss]

24. I don't think he's published.

He knows his stuff though. And one of the books he guided through in 2004 involved the torture of a cat, which if anything is worse than instant accidental death.

[Book Lover]

26. Is this for the UK market only

or are you also thinking international? Because in the US it would go over like free beer.

[Taxloss]

30. That wouldn't be my choice.

I just have to write the thing, 70,000 words. About one-third done and coming along nicely, but this cat/cleaner mortality issue is holding me up. If it does make it to print, and these things are never guaranteed, it would be launched in the UK on a low level and if it did OK maybe a US edition would be considered. You guys probably wouldn't get it until 2009. I'm still waiting to see the book I helped write in 2004-early 2005.

[SofaKingLiberal]

21. Then demonize the cleaner,

make the character into someone the readers will want to die and maybe use the cats to do it in a humorous way.

Or, why can't you kill both?

[Spider Jerusalem]

23. Two for the price of one...

have the cleaner trip over something the flat's temporary occupant has inadvertently left out of its place, fall headlong, and crush the cat beneath him whilst breaking his own neck.

[Taxloss]

27. You know, that idea has a great deal of merit.

If you had the cat die because of the actions of the cleaner (indirect consequence from the actions of the narrator), and then killed the cleaner as a result of the death of the cat - tripping over its corpse, for instance ... worth thinking about, thanks spider.

[Spider Jerusalem]

29. You're welcome...

glad I could be of assistance. :)

[TrogL]

28. Have the cleaner trip over the cat head-first into the piano

...at which point the lid falls down, decapitating him.

That scares the cat, mussing its fur.

Poor kitty.

[Fleshdancer]

32. with two cats and a cleaner, I recommend killing one cat and the cleaner..

the cat that lives could some how cause the death of the cleaner who squishes the other cat as s/he falls to her/his death.

Why? Because listening to the house-sitter trying to explain what happened would probably be pretty funny only because it sounds so unbelievable.

[Taxloss]

34. You're right, that would be pretty funny.

The house-sitter's report on what has transpired is already an agonising and, I hope, very funny scene.

[MrScorpio]

33. Kill the cat first, then the cleaner

Make it the beginning of dead bodies littered all over the place. One ridiculously comedic death after the other

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

35. Here's a question:

If the flat owner is such a neat freak, it seems odd that he would have cats, since they leave fur on things, bring home dead animals and necessitate litter boxes. Do the cats belong to the flat-sitter, or are they of the hairless, Sphinx breed (which still produce poo, though not fur)?

Although, come to think of it, I once knew a rather OCD sort of person who had carefully decorated his place in shades of white, black and gray, then got a couple of Russian Blue cats to set off the decor.

[Taxloss]

38. Good question.

Fortunately I have an answer.

Cats appeal to the owner, as they do to so many people. An important plot dynamic is that they are not permitted in certain areas of the flat; another is that they roam outside the flat a lot. The flat has wooden floors and leather, rather than upholstered, sitting room furniture, which makes cleaning easier. Also, the neat freak is based on a neat freak I knew who didn't have cats but had three huge dogs and seemed to consider cleaning after them as some sort of hobby. You're right in that it might seem unusual, I hope that in reading the book it does not seem unnatural.

[graywarrior]

36. The cat kills the narrator.

[LisaL]

37. Cleaner.

Who kills cats? That's not funny.

[miss_american_pie]

39. Listen to your agent

:)

[Orangepeel]

40. the neat freak has cats?

what about the hair?

the cleaner. People expect other people to die in books. If you kill the cat, you'll get letters.

[Taxloss]

41. I refer you to my answer in post #38.

I'm so torn over this.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

42. Another question, and a couple of silly suggestions:

Where do the poor cats sleep, since the flat seems to be devoid of upholstery?

Maybe he should have hairless Sphinx cats, which would add another eccentric touch to the story.

And if you want to get especially macabre, there's the fact that cats will eventually eat you when you're dead. So how about if you kill the cleaner and the cats eat him?

I do agree with other comments -- if you "kill" a cat you'll get letters. People are interested in homicide, but are put off by felicide.

[Taxloss]

43. Well, it would be accidental death.

Not felicide. The death would be caused by a train of events set in motion by the narrator, but it wouldn't be deliberate murder.

The cats sleep on the bed, and I have a photo that demonstrates where I got that idea from. And believe me, they're comfortable.