TIFU by accidentally burying the wrong cat and then having to dig it back up when my own cat came home alive

Throwaway because my friends know I’m online and I’m too shamed to have this tied back to me.

This happened a while back now but I haven’t told anyone apart from my family.

This happened around dinner time. My cat wasn’t home, like he usually is, so I looked out my window to see if I could spot him. That’s when I noticed something lying on the grass near our front garden. At first, I couldn’t quite tell what it was, but as I went outside, I realised it was a black cat.

For context, we have a black cat named Toto. He’s a little crazy, cute, very outdoorsy but normally very predictable. He always comes home at the same time every night, so seeing him, or what looked like him, lying there was terrifying.

I went closer and immediately shouted for my mum who picked him up and it was instant tears for all of us. It was clear he had already passed, likely hit by a car.

My aunt, who lives 2 minutes away, came over because we were all too shocked and traumatized to even think properly. She began wrapping him in blankets to put him in a box and I stopped her because I wanted to check his markings.

The thing is, we couldn’t get a completely clear look because of the accident and the way he was found. But I checked for the white patch of hair on his front right paw, the small brown patch of fur behind his ear, and the tiny white hair on his chest. It ALL matched. Every marking.

We wrapped him up, put him in a box, and my mum suggested a small funeral in the garden the next day, in one of his favorite spots. We buried him, wrote notes, placed his favorite toys on the grave, the whole grieving process. I didn’t even go to school the next few days because I was so upset.

Then, it was a couple of days later, I was sitting in my living room, and I kid you not, my cat walks in ALIVE. I literally screamed genuinely thinking I was seeing a ghost. For a solid few seconds, I couldn’t move or even believe what I was seeing. I was in shock.

He acted like nothing had happened. He went straight to his favorite corner behind the couch where he always naps, pawed at it then walked confidently to his little snack cupboard sitting there, like he usually does when he wants food at that EXACT TIME.

I screamed for my mum who came in and froze in pure disbelief.

The horror hit us both that the cat we had buried was not our cat. And to make things even crazier, we had no idea where Toto had been for the past couple of days. He always comes home at the same time every night, without fail. The fact that he hadn’t been around while we buried the other cat made the whole situation feel like a nightmare.

We were forced to dig up the cat. It was awful and I felt terrible and was still grieving the cat we thought we had lost. At the same time, there was this insane, overwhelming joy because Toto was alive. It was like mourning and celebrating all at once, and I honestly didn’t know how to process it.

We took the cat to the vets, who scanned him and confirmed the owners. RIP ;(

TL;DR: I accidentally buried a dead cat thinking it was mine, only for my real cat to walk in alive a few days later, forcing us to dig up the wrong cat and take it to the vets