Skip to main content

The Cat

Grayscale photo of a cat sharply silhouetted by the light from a distant window.
Photo by Gijs Coolen from Pexels

When I was younger, we had a sweet little indoor-only black cat that loved to go roll in the grass in the back yard. I liked her so much. She had this slipper that she loved to drag around like a security item, mom called it her kitten. Letting her out wasn't a big deal, because she stayed well to the center of the yard, enjoying the fresh air. If I left my door cracked at night she would come into my room after I was in bed, jump up, and curl into a ball by my feet.

Well, one day, she was in the back yard as had become her habit. the fence broke, and the dogs came over... well, you might guess how that ended.

We buried her in the front flowerbed, with that very slipper she loved so much.

A few years later, we've gotten more cats. I am going to bed. I peek around for cats, shut my door, turn off my light and climb into bed. I get settled, start to relax, and then I feel a cat jump up onto my bed and curl up by my feet. No big deal, really, Amy will sleep with me through the night, but the other three would wake me at about 3am, so I just need to figure out which cat it is. I reach down and there's no cat in the cat-shaped depression on my bed. So I think maybe it jumped down (even tho my senses are such that I would have felt it move, heard it hit the floor, etc)... I go and turn on the light and peek around. No cats.

Leaving, I close the door behind me, and count noses. Amy and Obie are sleeping on the couch. Bobbette is sleeping on a chair under the table. And Checkers is sleeping on a chair by the TV. Four noses. And my door is still shut.

I go back into my room, turn off the light, and climb into bed. And just as I start to fall asleep, I feel a cat jump up and curl into a ball by my feet...

This wasn't the last of her. About once or twice a week, after I'd settled in for the night, I'd feel Ebony - for I was certain that it was her - jump up onto my bed and go to sleep. But then I went away to college. And the dorms were dark and cold. And noisy. I was there for six months, gradually getting more exhausted.

Then one night, after I'd turned off the light and climbed into bed, I felt a cat jump up, and curl into a ball by my feet.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mitchiri Neko Mix, Mix 2, and Lab

TL:DR - found the correct archive for a game no longer on the Play Store. "Translation" note: I normally use double letters to represent the small-tsu character, but the Fan Wiki used a different romanization. Both are valid romanizations from different systems, although I believe the method I was taught is more modern. To respect the community, I will use the accepted standard of "Mitchiri Neko" for English/localized game titles, and to respect my own need for consistency I will use all-lowers "micchiri neko" for the pronounciation guide following Japanese characters. Also I apologise if my English is awkward at times, I'm not so good at Japanese that I can code-switch easily... polyglots and people who become bilingual later in life will confirm, learning a new language does something to the way you process the languages you already know, and most polyglots I know have to keep studying all of them to keep them straight - a bit like how, when you appl...
Post a Comment
Read more

If all bitches are the same, then all men are trash.

Plenty of men say they hate women with no reaction. In popular music, they chant "all bitches the same." That's hate. Over the dinner table, they say "well she should have defended herself." That's hate. As a joke, they say "women exist only to make babies and sandwiches." That's hate. In the legislative office, they say "We can't allow females to have access to birth control because it encourages them to have sex." That's fucking hate. The only reason you even noticed a problem is because we turned those words around on you. "All men are trash." "If you can't control your sexual desires then you need to be kept on a leash." "Child support should start at conception." "Men should get their tubes tied until marriage." Do you, a man among men, know what happens when a woman says those words? Of course not, because you aren't that woman. But perhaps you have some idea - perhaps ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Be aware of your surroundings, quarantine edition

One difficulty with online friendships is that a parent isn't as likely to have casual conversations with their child's friends as they carpool to school or have lunch at home, and a child isn't likely to have casual conversations with their friends' parents, meaning significant distortions in logic can develop by bouncing around the echo chamber of a teenage clique. Bigotry, like drain fungus, grows best when never confronted with personal relationships or at least unemotional logic. Many young people have been getting "red-pilled" by their online, low-responsibility relationships, private misogyny exploding into public violence without any indication of a trigger ... just like the parent of a child groomed for sexual exploitation, the parent of a person groomed for domestic terrorism never has any idea that it was going on.  To be clear, this is in no way intended to be a presentation of judgement, merely observation that there is a common dange...
Post a Comment
Read more