Thread: The Halloween Gift that Came Early

Tweet

Blessings to you and your gal for making his last days happier and more comfortable than they would otherwise have been. He knew he was loved.

I am terribly sorry he didn't make it. All of my cats were attained through happenstance and misfortune so I was rooting for the little guy while I was following this thread. As it has been said, at least he moved on under the care and love of another being.

Sometime when you get a second, check out an album by Jim Morrison and the Doors, AMERICAN PRAYER. It came with a bunch of picks, in one, Jimbo is behind a television in a color pic...wearing a blue work shirt, if memory serves.
That was the exact kind of TV that my grampa used to have. Black and white. After we would come home from swimming at lakeside, I'd go over and curl up beside gramp, and he'd narrate what was happening on the opera CBC had on that night. ("Now boy, that is Iago, an egg sucken' weasel that is maken that black man hate the one woman he has ever loved..watch...that black man is wrapping his fingers around his woman's neck..and...") He would cry, I would cry, it was wonderful.
After my cat died last week, I remember my grampa would take the little kittens and dip milk on his finger and have them suck it to teach them to drink. It always impressed me.
So maybe what happened next was just bound to happen.
I was in front of my t.v., watching THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY..waiting for the three corner gun fight...Leone's dance of death..opera in the open...
And suddenly, by thunder, I was on gramp's couch, but with a big cat sitting beside me, with his belly between his legs like Bucky, in GET FUZZY...smoking a tiny cigar and just staring at me.
"..hello..."I ventured.
"...Roger.." he replied between puffs.
"Excuse me?"
"Roger. My name is Roger. Or would have been. You would have looked in my yellow eyes and said my name was Roger."
"I see..."
"No...you don't...you think this is a dream..part of your brain rubbing against itself...maybe..But I would have grown to be fat and sassy and my name WOULD have been Roger."
"Geez," I muttered."Are those cigars hard to get?"
"No, the b+tch of it is finding the little matches."
We both laughed.
"So how is this working?"
"Remember your high school relays. The soul is passed along, person to person like the relay baton. I was your sister's black cat...Blackie..I was about four other cats. And I will be back.it would have been cool if Zontar could have been my mentor, but that's how it goes..but I will be back."
"Why?"
"Why does anything happen, really? Why pass the soul? Why should I want to communicate with you? Why should Zontar? Why should you dig Ray Charles? It just is."
We watched THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY on my grampa's t.v. in silence for a while.
"And what now?" I asked.
"I go back..or forward...maybe that skank of a mom of mine will deposit my next body back behind your BBQ, so keep an eye out...you KNOW she digs your place..and don't feel too bad. It wasn't your fault...insides went wrong, I think...I just wanted to thank you for the bottle and the time inside your shirt sleeve...and not naming me right off."
I told him he was welcome and we leaned into each other to watch the end of the movie.
My brother, the lay minister, listened to it all without comment and we had ourselves a memorial for Roger The Cat. Not as good a name as Felix, or Fritz, but it was his name.
He told me so.