Baby Furry Ghost

I was on my way to my friend's house, delivering Frappuccinno and a Snickers crunch bar, and prepared to provide a massage because her back was "killing her." (Oh the things we do in the middle of the night for friends). The journey through the dark countryside on a blacktop road was a ripe situation for dreamy vestiges. I'm not sure i really did hallucinate, and i may never know...

But there i was, winding around the wooded road, trying to keep my eyes peeled for feeding deer that often wander near the shoulders, and my eyes caught the darting form, a dark arrow of fur, scuttling across in front of me, toward the woods. I slowed, and as i passed the little form, i could swear it was a tiny black kitten, sitting there with soupy eyes, begging for me to stop and rescue it from a life of eating bugs and dodging the vehicular bullets that swept past each day and night.

What if it was synchronicity? What if i was meant to rescue this kitten? What if i was supposed to pull it, mewling from the brush, pick the stickers out if its fur and take it home to shower it with affection, give it a can of tuna and a saucer of milk? I was already a little maudlin about the impending adoption as i pulled to a stop.

It was 3 a.m., and traffic was almost non-existent. Since I couldn't find a place to turn around, i moved to the other lane and drove in that lane in reverse back toward the kitten. I figured if another vehicle did appear in the lane, i would at least be moving in the same direction as them, and if a car came in the other lane, it would be like passing me, except my vehicle was pointed in the wrong direction, but moving in the right one...

After a period of time, i couldn't find the little kitten, so i continued to my friend's house, (in the correct lane, and in DRIVE, not REVERSE...)

SIDEBAR: i wonder why the display on the gear box doesn't say REVERSE and FORWARD? What kind of sense does it make to say REVERSE and DRIVE? Why not DRIVE and NOT-DRIVE? It's like, "I now pronounce you MAN and WIFE. Not HUSBAND and WOMAN? It's like, if you put the car into DRIVE, you will magically be driven, and you can sit back and read the paper and have a cup of coffee while you are shuttled to your destination...

Back to the kitten...

I was already a little sad that i was unable to find the creature, save it, offer it sanctuary.

A few nights later, a repeat performance had me on the same road toward my friends house. As i swung around the corners in the dark, ever vigilant for foraging deer and possums and raccoons, i thought of the kitten. ...Wondered if it was still out there in the darkness, afraid and hungry. As i came to the bend in the road where i had seen the kitten a few nights before, i watched carefully, just in case the kitten had some little feline lean-to in that area of the woods and would wander out to the road to hitchhike for a new owner...

And Behold. There it was. I swear. The kitten, sitting by the side of the road...what were the chances? Was the Universe telling me i didn't try hard enough the last time? I drove quite a distance until i found a place to turn around and returned, determined to answer the calling of human kindness...i had the same feeling i get when i watch one of those movies on Lifetime (Television for Women and Gay Men). I searched the opposite side of the road. I didn't see it. Turning around again, i searched on my way back by, toward my original destination, and still did not see the kitten.

If there was a kitten.

But why would i see the same thing twice in the same location, unless it existed? And if the Universe really wanted me to save this kitten, why didn't it tell the little creature to stay put?

I continued to my destination, feeling just a little punked.

Baby Furry Ghost

SHOES

A short time back, I offered a blog entry on what could only have been a hallucination. The little black kitty I saw by the side of a dark road. Perhaps it was a waking dream…a precognitive waking dream, at that. This month, I adopted a tiny black kitten from the Humane Society. I was going to get another kitten, but she was too sick to adopt out and all her siblings had already died. On whim, I stopped in days later to check on her and decided I would check and see if there might be another kitten I liked that was healthier. I went in the cat room and immediately saw the minute black furball in the first cage. I went over and spoke to her and she pressed herself to the bars, purring, mewing softly, flipping over on her back and writhing in an impressive display.

I opened the cage and she jumped out onto my shoulder and began snuggling up under my hair and nuzzling my neck. It was not likely at this point, that I would leave without her. And I didn't. I loaded her in the van passenger floorboard next to the heating vent, sequestered in a cardboard box with holes punched in the sides. She didn't like the box much and made continuous efforts to free herself from the hole between the top flaps. My journey home was not conducive to dealing with a frightened cat, since the roads in my area are hilly and curvy and safe drivers never take their eyes from the blacktop. That's why I put her in the box. But she would have none of it, finally struggled free and scampered up to my shoulder, leaving the first of what would be many claw marks and punctures in my skin. But she rode there happily, forgoing the natural inclination to wrap herself around my face like that creature on Alien.

She looked out the window, watched the road, purred in my ear and waited for me to pull into my parking space at home. LS was asleep in my bed when I got home (she has, of late managed to get her insomniac self on the opposite schedule from me) I placed the kitten on her chest and she awoke to the joy only a new kitten can bring--she being a cat-lover herself. Soon, we were discussing names for the new family member. She suggested "Frodo" although I'm not sure she was being anything but a smart ass. The kitten had little white markings on each of her feet, but I refused to name her "Socks" or "Boots." So when she crawled into my shoes and looked up at me mewing, she named herself. Shoes.

SHOES