Why I sleep with a dead cat-To Be Continued

Just love meows! I sleep with two breathing creatures and one who has been in the "other" world since Nov 4, 1994. I have written about it in one of my books. However, it bears repeating-well-just because.

His name was Felix. He was named after my deceased father. He sauntered. He was the neighborhood tough guy. Yet, I was allowed to rub his belly. He knew his mommy. The kids would dare their friends, unbeknownst to me of course, to rub his belly. Just imagine the hell that that caused me!

One day in 1979 I lay in a deep depression. I had everything a girl could ask for, a great husband, wonderful kids and a lovely home. I was a hypochondriacal mess who at one point firmly believed that I had contracted typhoid fever. Along with that, the muscles in my legs noticeably danced and I somehow, overnight had developed deformed arthritic fingers.

Let's just say I was a little self-referential. What I was was fucking bored out of my mind, out of love, never had been, and working real hard at keeping my husband, a good but exceedingly boring man, the head of the family in the best christian tradition.

May the christian south forgive me!

Came a knock at the door. "Lo, the dawn cometh!" A scrawny kid stood shaking at the door holding an equally scrawny kitten.

"My, my mother's gonna kill it and if my mother doesn't, my father's gonna kill my mother!" he breathlessly screeched.

I was so upset that I forgot about my arthritic fingers and grabbed the little boy. "Are you OK?" I asked. He gave me this incredulous look.

"Yea!" he said. "They're gonna kill the cat not me!"

Well I was gonna kill the little bastard-fucking big time-for scaring the shit out of me. "Please, please will you take him? Everybody says you feed all the animals. That's why they call you the cat lady."

"What?" I hushed in an almost soundless delirium. "They call me what?"

"Yea, didn't you know? That's why I knew you would take him."

"I'm not taking any cat little boy. Are you OK? Are you afraid that your father is going to hurt you in some way?"

Repeated look of incredulity!

"Lady," he said with the right corner of his mouth skewed up and his eyes squinting in fear, while attempting to liberate himself from my claws. "Can I please go now?"

His body fell away from my hold. As I looked first up the block and then down, I did not say a word. I was not breathing. He shook his head, turned and ran down the path. The kitten's head was visibly bobbing from side to side. The sun was dimming. It was a June night. My heart had stopped. The kids were playing in front of the house. The knots in my fingers were systematically unwinding before my eyes. A disembodied spirit, I walked into the den. My husband was sitting in his favorite chair puffing on a cigar with his left hand while he was beginning to conduct music with a glass of bourbon in his right hand. He was listening to the pianissimo lamentation of Beethoven's Sonata Quasi Fantasia. He was listening to my life.

Copyright © 2008 by m.m.sugar