Feeling compelled to make up a story is part of the whole group pressure thing. Either you overshare i.e. share something that actually happened but that you would never have wanted to share without the group (and boss) pressure situation or you make something up (like many people in the comments here are saying).

I guess the difference is the same what I mentioned about stand-up changing: The team decided to do that. It wasn't a manager saying that's how we do things now.

EDIT: I also just realized you gave out condolences. See if I was in the situation from the article I might not be able to quickly come up with something fake and I'd instinctively just mention the cat thing (coz I don't want to be the guy that gets shunned). And then the next few weeks are gonna be very uncomfortable coz people will keep mentioning it.