TL;WR: While searching for our lost cat, cousin accidentally kills a neighbor cat and thinks it was the one we were looking for. Also, I'm probably a bad person.
I have a similar story.
My mom used to take care of old people. She lived with this old lady, Lenora, who adopted this little stray orange cat. The cat was kind of a jerk, but liked the old lady so it was all good.
One day, we have a family visit over at Lenora's house because my mom lived there. My cousin, we'll call her Sue, had never been there.
So, the cat had been missing that day, and the lady was getting worried. I went out the front door to go cat hunting while my brother went out to check the back yard.
As soon as I left the front door, I see this one fat orange neighborhood cat sitting on the fence, which was a bit irritating just because I kept seeing it out of the corner of my eye and getting momentarily excited that I might have seen Lenora's orange cat. I liked this fat guy though, because I knew he was actually a hunter that killed and ate birds, which was pretty badass for such a fat cat. Feels bad for the birds, though :(
Anyway, my cousin comes out the front door to help, immediately spots the neighborhood orange fatcat on the fence. Having never seen Lenora's cat, and looking for an orange fella, says "-AcodeX! I see the cat right there! Come help me catch him."
"No, Sue, that's the wrong one" I replied, but she was too engrossed in trying to entice the kitty to come to her and not be afraid.
I repeated myself a couple of times with her ignoring me, and decided to just let this thing run its course. When the cat runs away, I'll be able to explain it to her, I thought.
Once she gets close enough to the cat, of course. it bolted. "Why aren't you helping me?!" Sue yelled.
The cat's already halfway across the street before she finishes her sentence, and WHAM gets smashed by some jerk speeding down the neighborhood street. They didn't even slow down.
My cousin falls to her knees, bawling.
It should be noted here, that I have a dark sense of humor... I immediately erupt in laughter while I try to explain that it was ok... even though it obiously wasn't.
We're both in tears for different emotions. It wasn't her fault, she was just trying to help, but she's sure that she just killed Lenora's cat. Everything made it more horrible and more comical. She didn't kill Lenora's cat, but she still killed a cat... I knew the truth, but couldn't tell her through her bawling, and even if I could tell her, the truth was still awful. That made it funnier.
Eventually I get the truth through to her, and of course it's not much consolation. The rest of the family came out to see what was causing the commotion, and only saw a little bit of the humor that I saw in the situation.
Within 5 minutes while we're out there mourning the cat and talking about how cool he was and everything, some lady drives by, picks the dead cat up out from the middle of the road and unceremoniously throws it to the curb... for some reason that made me feel sick, probably because it was beginning to sink in that this fella was actually dead, and his being treated so poorly hurt my feelings :(
Later, we found Lenora's cat, little bastard that he was.