The Cat Who Walked Through Death

“For the cat is cryptic, and close to strange things which men cannot see.”

                                                                                                                     – H.P. Lovecraft

I’ve always liked the above quote from Lovecraft. As is true with almost all of the authors I enjoy, many interesting quotes about cats can be attributed to him. I have never seen any convincing proof of the supernatural during my lifetime, but I try to keep an open mind. As a firm believer in scientific methodology, faith has never really been my strong suit. However, it’s always inspired my imagination to believe that cats are somehow able to peek through the veil between our perception of reality and the ineffable unknown–and maybe walk through it as well.

This story is about my cat, Vera. She was a feisty, yet sweet, tabby cat who came to live with us as soon as she was weaned as a kitten. We thought she would provide good company for our majestic older black cat, Luna. Though at first it didn’t quite work out as we had hoped (Luna was less than impressed), in a short time they came to an understanding and Vera became an integral part of our family. Vera was always purring like a maniac and the first one to come up and headbutt visitors’ hands, demanding attention. As is tradition in my home, before much time had passed she had a list of nicknames longer than your arm: The Tiny Tabby Tiger Terror, Stripe Power, De Beers, Wooly Bully, The De Beer-a-tar, Thunder Paw, The Dawn of De Beers… And too many others to list. For reasons which I never understood, she loved sleeping in our armpits with her leg cocked up over an arm and a stripey tail whipping a face. Like all cats I have lived with, she enjoyed playing “fetch.” While she wasn’t the sharpest cat by any means (she enjoyed clawing my door jamb, chewing on plastic, and was deathly afraid of any stray sock which might be on the floor), her loving nature more than made up for it.

As a writer, I spend far too many hours isolated in a room working. I don’t have any real friends to speak of. My cats are, honestly, just about my best friends. Vera was the cat who would come in and sit on my lap when I’d been working too long without a break. If that failed, she would climb up my arm, perch on my shoulder like an impossibly chubby parrot, then purr into my face until I started laughing and was forced to come back and check in on the real world for a while. If you have cats, you know the dozens of little things they do which make the world easier to endure.

You might have noticed that I keep referring to Vera in the past tense. A few months back she started acting sluggish and sick. Being poor, we took her to a sliding-scale veterinarian who diagnosed her with pneumonia, prescribed antibiotics, and assured us that she would probably be okay. I hated having to shove those pills down her throat; but when you take on the responsibility of being a pet guardian you don’t have a choice. For her part, she seemed to understand that we were doing all of this to help her. After a couple of weeks she started to show signs of getting better. We breathed a collective sigh of relief. Sadly, her recovery was short-lived. She soon started to decline again, and scraping together all the money we could possibly manage, we made an appointment with another vet. The diagnosis wasn’t good.

I had to work during the time of the appointment, and received the dreaded call from my girlfriend. Vera had stomach cancer. Even if we had been rich, there was absolutely nothing we could do. She asked if the inevitable should be held off until I could be there.

“Is she in pain?” I asked. She was. Doing my best to keep my voice from cracking, I put on my big boy pants and tried my best to put up a strong front by calmly saying, “Well then, making her wait for me wouldn’t really be very fair to her. She shouldn’t suffer any more. Go ahead and let her go.” In truth, that was a big part of my decision—but the other part was that I’m a coward and didn’t want my last memory of Vera to be there, scared, and slipping away into the “big sleep” in a vet’s office. I’ve already lost far too many things that I loved which still haunt me. I hung up the phone as tears started streaming down my face right there at work. I tried to hide my distress and stifle my sobs as I quickly made my way to the alley out back. My grief poured out in burning hot torrents as the knife twisted in my heart. Anyone who has ever loved and lost a pet knows these feelings all too well.

Where this story takes a twist began shortly thereafter. Strange things started to happen in our apartment. We noticed them independently, yet tried to rationalize it all away. Even Luna, our remaining cat, seemed to notice. Eventually it wasn’t so easy to dismiss. We had started to hear familiar noises—the distinct sound of cat food crunching out by the cat bowls—even though Luna was sitting right there next to us. Scratches in the litter box—again, with Luna sitting right next to us. Luna snapped to attention, hearing the noises and staring out where they had originated from, but very uncharacteristically—showing no desire to go investigate. Luna is slightly aloof—as many cats tend to be—yet she started spending all her time near us. Maybe she was just grieving? Maybe, in our grief, we were just imagining things? It seemed like the rational answer. Then things started getting knocked over. We started to feel brushes up against our legs, only to look over and find Luna on the bed far away, but staring intently. She was always staring intently now, but at what we couldn’t determine. These occurrences sound creepy, and they were a little, but more than anything they just felt strange and impossible to explain.

Even as the waves of crushing grief started to subside and I went back to writing diligently, the sounds, brushes against my arms and legs, or the sensation of a cat jumping up onto the bed persisted. Lots of times these things would happen while I was completely engaged in an activity like writing or playing a video game–my mind occupied and temporarily distracted from the grief. To have my attention interrupted by these little occurrences while I was so focused made them even more surprising and harder to dismiss. I just tried to believe that my subconscious mind was playing tricks on me, but to be honest, I wasn’t so sure anymore.

One day on a whim, I started to look for accounts of these phenomena on the internet. Sure enough, I found that lots of people claimed to have similar experiences. Where I would have completely discounted these people as kooks or frauds just a few days before, now I read their stories with reserved interest. As I read, I heard the familiar sound of scratching on the door jamb of my room. I looked over to scold Luna, but of course, she was nowhere to be found. Stray particles of paint and wood from a claw mark slowly floated down and settled on the floor.

Finally, we got a call from the vet that Vera’s effects were available for pickup. We made the trip out to pick up her collar, a plaster cast of her footprint, and a small urn. Upon returning home with these items, all of the strange events stopped just as suddenly as they started. I still can’t really explain any of it to this day. I also don’t care if other people believe me or simply write this off as fiction. I sincerely hope (and believe) that Vera found peace. She will certainly always live on in my heart and memories. The beauties, tragedies, and mysteries of the world are always there to inspire us—if only we take the time to observe them with catlike interest.

Dedicated to Vera, a couple of friends on social networks who have recently lost their furry little friends too, and anyone else who knows how that feels.

The opening quote is from The Cats of Ulthar by H.P. Lovecraft (whom, despite some of his antiquated views on certain topics, continues to be a never-ending source of inspiration for contemporary writers).

And yes, the title of this story is indeed a hat tip to Robert A. Heinlein (a writer who has long been another huge inspiration to me).

The image is from Zerkiee on deviantART.