A man finally decides to go on the vacation of his life. He had
been putting it off because he owned a prize winning cat and
he also looked after his aging mother who lived next door. After
much worrying he decided to leave his cat in his brother's care
and take the vacation he'd so long put off.

"OK," he told his brother "Take good care of my cat and check
in on Mom every day."

"Yeah, yeah," said the less responsible brother "I'll take care of everything, you just go on your stupid vacation."

So the vacation started by him being dropped off at the airport
by his now "responsible" brother. After two weeks the man
returned from his trip and his brother picked him up at the airport. Getting into the car the man immediately asked "How's my cat doing?"

"Your cat's dead." came the reply from his brother.

"WHAT?" asked the man in total shock.

"I said Your cat's dead." said the brother.

"My God man, don't you have any feelings?" said the man in
disbelief. "You don't just blurt out something like that!"

"Well," said the brother "What should I say then?"

"You should break news like that slowly and allow time for the person hearing it to prepare themselves for the shock...not just 'you cat's dead" came the reply.

"OK, Like how?" asked the non feeling brother.

"Well, this, 'Your cat was sitting on the window sill watching some birds outside, and he went out on the roof to try to catch them and accidentally fell off the roof and unfortunately he died." See, how it allows me time to anticipate that something might be wrong and to prepare myself for something unexpected? It's not so much of a shock that way." said the now grieving brother. "So try to be a little more considerate of others feelings, OK?"

"OK," said the brother "I'm sorry I broke it to you that way."

"OK," said the ex-cat owner "Now, let's try to get back to some
normalcy. How's Mom?"

"Well," said the brother "Mom was sitting on the window sill
watching some birds...."