Clementine was very confused by her
recent dreams, or travels, or whatever they were. If they were dreams, they weren’t like any
she’d ever had. Dreams usually didn’t
make sense; cats and humans popped in and out with no rhyme or reason and they
certainly didn’t start at point A and get to point B. These ‘whatevers’ were perfectly sensible so
long as she accepted that one minute she could be lying on the bed and the next
be on a different continent hundreds of years in the past. The dreams also had details in them she
didn’t know, but were confirmed by further research when she returned from
wherever she had been; things like the name of the cat who became the Japanese
Lucky Cat, or that Mohammed wasn’t sleeping in his robe when he took the sleeve
off. Oh, so confusing.
Well, she was a young cat with very
little practical experience. Maybe this
was the kind of thing that happened to other cats all the time. She could ask the others if they had any
similar experiences. Between Rudy, LT,
Emma, Kid, Buddy, Ursula and Tatum there had to be somecat who had this type of
experience. Well, if it was an
experience or dream that did in fact occur with other cats at all. A frightening thought occurred to
Clementine. Maybe she was going crazy. Could cats become psychotic? These could be very elaborate
hallucinations. Sometimes the yarn lady
watched that TV show about the man who saw people who weren’t there, and look
what happened to him. He ended up shut
in a hospital and was given medication that made his mind all fuzzy. She didn’t want that to happen to her. Quickly she composed an email to the other
cats:
____________________________________________________________________________________
From:
clem@catlover.com
Subject: Time and space travel dreams
Do any of you ever have dreams where you end up at some
other time and place in history where you see events that really occurred? This has happened to me twice recently and I
saw things I didn’t know about but later confirmed through more research. Please answer me promptly as I’m afraid I’m
going crazy.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Next the question was whether to
stop the research altogether and hope she never did it again or proceed and
perhaps do something to test if it was a dream or reality. Opening Google Docs she perused her list of
topics. Hmm…one of them was pretty vague
and obscure. Visitors to homes in
England during the 16th century would typically kiss the family
cat. If she popped into something like
that it would be pretty generic. Not a
specific person or house in history like the last two. And maybe there would be some way that she
could change something or bring something back and that would prove that she’d
been there for real, and not just in a dream.
Well, it was pretty clear she wasn’t going to give this up, since she
was figuring out what she should do and where to go. Clem ran a claw down the list. Some of the topics looked really interesting,
but also like they would keep her away from home for a good while if she had to
wait for something to happen or for a whole story to run its course. Those would have to wait a bit until she had
more experience with this. It would be
terrible if it turned out that she really went to these places and she got
stuck and couldn’t come back. It would
be horrible if she ended up in prehistoric times with saber-toothed tigers or
something like that. They’d eat her as an
appetizer.
So, Ye Olde Englande it was. Before she clicked on the bookmark that
seemed to start the adventures Clem figured she’d check her email in case
someone had answered her. There was one
response from Tatum and Ursula. She wasn’t
sure which one had composed it, but the gist was that she should make sure she
didn’t do anything that would possibly change the future because then it might
cause her not to exist. Whoever had
written the email watched a lot of science fiction shows it seems. The email was full of references to time
paradoxes and the universe going *poof*.
Clem snickered a little bit. If
someone was able to make the universe go *poof* it would have already
happened. It wouldn’t be because a
tortoise shell/tiger cat moved a chair cushion.
The website that seemed to take her
to the past had yet another cat on the webpage.
This one was asleep on a rug in front of a fireplace with a brightly
burning fire that flickered. Clem could
even hear the crackle of the fire. As she
looked, the sleeping cat raised its head and made eye contact with her…
…and Clem found herself in the
living room on the hearth next to the cat.
The other cat stretched and stood up.
Clem looked at the cat, wondering if she would be able to see her, but
it appeared that either she was being ignored or was invisible. Ignored was a definite possibility, since
after all this was a cat. While humans
are not good at really ignoring anything cats can pull it off.
Clem decided she’d push the
envelope in trying to get the humans to see her. Instead of sitting in a corner she’d romp,
she’d sing, she’d climb the curtains - well she would if there were
curtains. Looking around the room she
saw no curtains, but there were things that she could climb on and jump off
of. Maybe she’d even try jumping on one
of the humans when she found them. Right
now she was all alone in the room, since the cat had left. She left the room by the same door the cat
had used and found herself in what she figured was a bedroom, except that it
had several beds in it. There was a
large one and a small one and a cradle.
There was a tall cabinet with doors and a low one with drawers. The cat had taken up residence on the smaller
bed, so Clem decided to join her. She
landed next to the other cat and it seemed as though the covers dented a bit
when she hit them. Not as much as she
thought her weight would warrant, but at least they moved. Clem vaulted over the other cat, no response. Well, she thought, let’s try something
different. She sat down next to the cat
and experimentally began grooming the other’s tail. The cat flicked her tail away in annoyance
and looked around as though she were looking for a bug. Clem pinned the tail with a paw and the cat
sprang up and off the bed with a screech, running into the other room.
A door opened in and two women
walked in. “Maysie, whatever are you
caterwauling about? Come here dear
heart. Let dear Lizzie give you a kiss.” The woman who had not spoken walked up to Maysie
and picked her up, giving her a peck on the forehead. Maysie rolled her eyes skyward and squirmed
until she was put down. “Thank you, Lizzie. Now let’s sit and have a bit of a talk.” The two sat in chairs pulled up to the
hearth, as it was a bit chilly. Clem
paid them little attention as their talk was about folks whose names she didn’t
know and was mostly of the gossipy sort.
Nothing useful. She roamed the
room, looking for things to do. Out of
the corner of her eye she saw movement, and all the time she’d spent chasing
yarnballs finally paid off. She did a
quick waggle and pounce and was rewarded by the feeling of a squirming mouse
under her paws. With a quick bite she
killed it, deciding that it was better to rid these kind humans’ house of mice
(and also so she could say she had her first kill).
Lizzie remarked to the other woman,
“Did you hear a mouse? I swore I just
heard one. You are so lucky to have a
cat who is such a good mouser. I wish my
Dirk would catch as many as yours does.”
The other woman replied that she’d heard a squeak also, but not to
worry. Clem picked up the mouse in her
mouth and wondered how real this all was.
The mouse certainly felt and smelled real. As she sat there, wondering what she should
do next, she felt a wave of disorientation and began losing consciousness.
Clem awoke to the yarn lady’s voice
saying, “Clementine, I am so proud of you!
You caught a mouse, and I’ve never even heard one here. However did this little fellow get in? I’ll be he was an outdoor mouse taking refuge
from the horrible storm last week. Well,
you are now officially a mouser, and not just a yarnball chaser. Now, may I have that fine mouse? Since you left it on the iPad, I assume it
was a gift for my supper?”
Since she hadn’t purposely left it
anywhere at all, Clem wasn’t awfully inclined to let anyone have her
mouse. She put her paw on it, but when
the yarn lady gently tugged on the mousie’s tail, Clem let go. Maybe the yarn lady was still short of food,
and wanted to eat the mouse. She knew
that yesterday on the phone she’d said that the local grocery store still didn’t
have power and she’d have to go to another one to get anything cold, so that could
be the problem. And protein is protein,
whether it was chicken, turkey, beef or mouse.
As the yarn lady carried the mouse out, Clem thought about what had
happened. She’d been to England and
witnessed a guest kissing a cat, just like in her research, but more to the point
she’d managed to have an impact on both worlds.
That one had one less live mouse and this one had one more dead
one.
And she’d seen the dead mouse here
at the yarn lady’s place and it had been sitting right on the iPad - for real,
not just a dream. The yarn lady had
picked it up and carried it away. Clem
wasn’t sure all of a sudden if it was more or less reassuring to know that she’d
really been to England and brought home a dead mouse. What if that mouse had plague germs and everyone
died? Or conversely, what if the people
in Olde Englande needed that mouse to spread disease to kill some horrible
possible dictator or assassin or axe murderer or who knows what. Clem squirmed herself in far under the covers,
determined to drop this research and leave well enough alone.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment