The Dead Cat Who Came To Bed

The unraveling of the following tale proves the timeworn axiom oft quoted by parents and other sages: circumstances aren't usually as bad as they first appear. I lay out this conclusion at the beginning so it won't be lost at the end. Benign from the outset, the saga I'll now describe skewed toward the bizarre with the dead cat's inexplicably appearance--between us in the bed.

Married for only about a month, Mary and I transformed to a happy threesome when Punkin, a kitten, cracked my hard shell of felineophobia. Heeding Mother's admonition, as good sons ought to do, I had theretofore embraced her notion that cats carried germs and sucked the breath out of babies. How such an odious creature had surreptitiously wormed her way into my acceptance makes a tale best told another day.

So when we three arrived home for a weekend visit, Mother's options instantly narrowed: let the kitty stay where no cat had gone before, or shoo us along to more feline-friendly accommodations. Some might say we forced her hand, and I guess we did twist motherly affection into resigned acquiescence. "Just keep her in the bedroom," she ultimately sighed.

Bedroom door dutifully shut, we retired for the night, purring kitten between us. Utopia for newly marrieds, it might seem. And from time to time, Mary's outstretched hand would find continued assurance of her kitty's warm and fuzzy body where she had felt it last.

Save the final time, that is, when the hand fell upon what seemed a stick of stove wood: cold, stiff and lifeless with a hairy, bristly texture. Dead cat.

With mind struggling to process the macabre possibilities, not just of the unexplained demise of her beloved, Mary sprang to Scarlet O'Hara's airy nonchalance. "I'll think about this tomorrow." Then resolutely denying the obvious, she flipped to her right side, leaving me to discover the dead cat on my own and deal with it as I saw fit.

Momentarily, however, a leaden weight on her feet arrested her mental flight from reality. Stretching to investigate this peculiar phenomenon, she discovered the ever-so-familiar vibrating fur ball at the end of the bed.

Without pausing to consider that nature abhors both vacuums and dead cats, the events of succeeding microseconds defy physical law and order. And through no deliberate decision or effort, muscular reactions instantly convulsed her into space, soon to land as solidly as a post by the bedside. Screams, if you want to call unintelligible, run-on utterances screams, yanked me to alertness. "Getupgetupgetup! Something'sinthebedandit'snotPunkin!"

A thoroughly desperate scramble through bed, covers and closet yielded no clue of the mysterious presence with a dead cat's touch and feel. Reluctantly returning to bed, I gladly resumed sawing logs. But every good wife knows that niggling thoughts of something once amiss might unexpectedly compel action.

A prickly sensation alerting her to "the presence" once again, raw courage alone rose to face what she now acknowledged to be from the supernatural realm. Her tentative hand carefully extended into the space between us--and "it" lay there as before, stiff and hard and lifeless.

No medal for bravery was ever pinned for what happened next. With her soul in her throat, she gripped the unknown entity, determined to wrestle it to the death, either its or hers. It resisted. Both hands fell to the task. It fought back. Screams again erupted. "James! Wakeupwakeupwakeup. I'vegotiti'vegotit."

Throwing off enough slumber to soberly assess the crisis, I, as good husbands ought to do, put the matter fully and finally to rest. A shout of my own quickly dispatched the dead cat to the curious realm of campfire and dinner party stories. "Let go! That's my arm!"

Copyright 2003 James McAlister

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