Let's Just Get the Weirdness Out of the Way Up Front

My long, strange trip started with the ghost of Billie the cat coming to visit me. No, I'm not making this up. About a month before my father died, and unknown to me at that time, my cousin killed the cat. He readily admits to it, and told me about it with a laugh in his voice. I'd say it was nervous laughter, but I don't believe that. At the time of the visitation, I thought, as did the Florida neighbors, that Billie had been taken away by the Humane Society. So I was at a loss as to what was going on at night in my bedroom.

 

The first time it happened I was asleep. I woke to the distinct feeling of a cat jumping onto my bed. Except, when I opened my eyes, there was no cat. I sleep with my bedroom door closed and locked, so a stray cat getting in would've been fairly impossible. I told myself it was a dream. A few nights later I was lying in bed, not asleep, thinking about how I wasn't asleep and would really like to be, with my eyes closed, when the cat jumped onto the bed again. I didn't open my eyes. I stayed very still, hyper aware that I was awake and therefore not dreaming, and doing an internal freak out over why I just felt a cat jump onto my bed. Then it walked over my legs. That did it. Eyes as wide open as humanly possible, body scrambling back against the wall, legs drawn up to my throat. About all I didn't do was scream like a little girl. There was no cat. No anything else, either.

 

I told John about it the next morning, not even caring that he'd mock me, because it was scary and I wanted someone to know about it, as if that would lessen the fright. He said, "You're craving a kitten. That's what it means." Not what I expected as far as possible responses from him. I said I did not crave a kitten, or the required kitty litter pan, or the vet bills. Not at all. It remained a mystery. Then I felt my father pass.

 

On July 6, while house-sitting in LA, I tried to watch the Barbara Walters special on Heaven, and what it means to various cultures and how to get in (besides by being dead, of course). I couldn't stay awake. I just kept dozing off and missed the majority of the show. A little before 11:00, pacific time, I gave up and turned the TV off and rolled onto my side, hugging the pillow and allowing myself to go to sleep. The thought came to me that I was an orphan, but I was far too tired to examine it. At 5:48 the next morning my cousin called to tell me that my father had died -- "at around two in the morning." Two in the morning, east coast time. 

 

I was surprised that he was gone. A nurse had told me less than 24 hours before that he was "doing okay." But I wasn't surprised that I knew somehow. That seemed perfectly normal to me.

 

After I arrived in Florida and was talking with my cousin, (and it's difficult to write about this trip and him in particular and still live by "if you nothing nice to say, say nothing at all"), he told me, with a laugh, that he'd lied to the neighbors about what happened to Billie. He'd come out to Florida, from Texas, and discovered fleas in the house. When you stop paying the pest control people and no one treats the cat, fleas will happen. He bought bug bombs. Then he "couldn't find" the cat. It's a mobile home and she was a fat cat. Only so many places to hide. When he couldn't find her, he simply set off the bombs anyway. With her in the closed up house. Then he did it again, just to be sure he'd killed all those fleas. When he saw Billie after the poison cleared, he called the Humane Society to come get her (plan A not having worked, if you ask me). They came out, and wanted to be paid to take her away to the pound or wherever she'd go. But when they went to pick her up, they realized she was dead. So the poison worked slowly. He got his money back and took care of her body himself. He said he "buried her at the beach." I managed not to cry, not to call him any of the names fighting to be voiced, and to keep a look on my face that suggested I believed him. He went on to tell me that he had to lie to the neighbors, or they might've told my father that Billie was dead and upset him. I said it was good of him to keep my father's feelings uppermost in mind. I discovered a level of self-control I didn't know I possessed. 

 

Later, safely away from him and in the guest bedroom at my aunt's house, I thought about the timing of when he'd killed Billie and when I'd felt the cat jump on my bed. I didn't know the exact dates, but it was close enough for me to believe that she came to say goodbye.