Vera and Rose Ellen are leaving a shopping center in San Antonio. As they head for the parking lot, Rose Ellen spots an orange and white cat lying dead on the asphalt.

A cat lover forever, Rose Ellen stops to gaze sadly at the poor critter. Vera is in a hurry. She wants to put their shopping bags in the car and get lunch.

"I can’t just leave him here," Rose Ellen says. She takes the purchases out of her Dillard’s shopping bag and puts the items in Vera’s bag.

Then she cradles the dead kitty in some tissue paper and tenderly lowers it into the Dillard’s bag. Vera watches in disbelief, but then, she’s not a cat lady.

The women put all their stuff in the trunk of Rose Ellen’s car and head for the mall food court. Vera speaks up: "Your Saturn will smell like a dead cat by the time we get back." Rose Ellen agrees, so they go back to the car leave the Dillard’s bag, containing the late kitty, on the trunk lid — outside of the car.

From where the girls are seated in the food court, they can see Rose Ellen’s car. They also see an oversized woman in an avocado-colored outfit eyeballing Rose Ellen’s Dillard’s bag.

The woman looks back and forth, then, quick as a flash, she snatches the bag up and keeps on walking. Before Rose Ellen and Vera recover from their shock, the woman in the avocado outfit is in line at the food court.

The woman sits down a few tables away from our girls. Before she eats her lunch, the big woman opens the Dillard’s bag to view her prize. That’s when Miz Avocado screams, knocks over her cola, and falls backward out of her chair.

It doesn’t take paramedics long to get there. The woman is loaded onto an ambulance. The last thing Rose Ellen and Vera remember seeing — one of the paramedics places the Dillard’s bag on the avocado woman’s stomach. The back door slams and off they go, Code-Three, to the nearest emergency room.

"Poor kitty," says Rose Ellen, "I hope they give him a decent burial."