Saturday, September 24, 2016

I am Puma, the he-cat. I was nicknamed so out of my extremely gorgeous kind. My thick fur is all gray without any casual spots that come from grandmothers’ sex with stray cats, no spots at all! At morning hours, the Sun shine enriches my fur with delicate silvery glow. I am a purebred “Thailand Corat,” and my task was to accompany the monarchy guests during their walks in the monarchy parks and gardens and always put good manner first, whatever happens to us during our stay on earth! These valuable faculties still sit in my little head. And I remembered this when I was homeless one time and I was looking for food in the city dump, or I was wondering aimlessly, or suffered beating when misguided by the smell I used to jump through the open windows into various kitchens and sniffed around until I was discovered, and beaten mercilessly, despite my aristocratic origin! Yes, I was a little thief who stole any food, but I did it always in extra polite manner, always in style. However, along the way, I leaned something useful as well, for instance that my famous strong nails were given me for a purpose as well. If the fight for a sausage became personal, I allowed my nails to sink deep in my enemies’ skin, and the sausage was always mine!

My head is small and graceful, my yellow eyes can stop anyone who was offering me unsolicited petting, even if this was my earth mother Irma, who discovered me on the streets and brought home into her small apartment. But she has outrageously spoiled granddaughters, Sasha and Sonya, my secret enemies, as Irma always prefers their company to mine!

But I am not a doll, and if I am in no-mood, do not come close to me!  I’ll put my teeth around their adorable wrists or fingers, so awfully clean and well smelling that it calls to bite them. But I am a very noble cat and baby fingers are not my food! Nevertheless, despite my exclusive manners, my sharp teeth looked still like a danger to Irma’s granddaughters, as they started bellowing, and Irma… I know what she had in mind, and in case, I disappeared out of her view as fast as possible! The touch of my teeth of their hairless skin was so gentle, how could it hurt them? But who would see a perfect gentleman hiding under my gray fur! I hid, but Irma found me under her bed, and locked me up in her shiny and boring bathroom. Through the locked door, I could sense that Irma rushed to these wicked girls, and started kissing their completely unharmed fingers, wrists and feet.  Oh, this world can be so unjust and unfair! They had fun, but I was left out and sat in that hateful bathroom all alone! But why I am telling all this? It is not this banal story that I am here to share! I have another one, a real miracle story to prove that all proverbs about cats having nine or seven lives to live make perfect sense, and you’ll never know when fate makes a move to prove them to be undeniably true.

On that fateful Sunday, mom Irma ignored my excellent hyperopia, my foreboding that the trip that she was planning would bring only trouble. Instead of postponing the visit to her son’s mansion in Encino, she stuck me into our ill-famous plastic box called pet carrier to be placed into passenger’s seat next to Irma’s driver seat, and the trip toward my very dangerous adventure began. The trip lasted an eternity. My body was hit from all sides before we reached her son’s house. I noticed that the neighborhood looked different, a lot of greens, no cars, quietude, no kids jumping around, their laughter echoed from behind the high fences, decorated with flower beds to balance their gloomy look of walls.  We were let in the mansion. All scrambled to fondle me. Their dog Mika (of course, the girl) was clearly challenged as it failed to bark at me. Instead, Mika wagged her pink tongue and little helpless tail joyfully. I planned a lasting hiss at her, but as a gentleman, I had to give up my famous and threatening hiss that I will demo some other time! Irma opened the can of my cat food and set it in the open near the stony steps into kitchen. I was hungry, but oh no, I would not jump to swallow my food in gusto under the eyes of wondering public, but Mika did!  I was ready start hissing, but again — this stupid animal was a lady, and gentlemen are not hissing at ladies, they look at opportunity to do something else with them. Do not think that as a nuted cat I knew nothing about facts of life! Irma opened another can for me, and Mika pounced on my meal again, and soon it was gone from the plate. However, my pride does not allow me to intervene appropriately. I retired gracefully to a flower bed. Sashenka, rushed behind me, and stroked me squatting nearby under a blooming Cactus with little needles adorning the edges of its meaty gray-green leafs.

Of course, soon enough this fidgety girl’s hand was pricked by cactus’ needles, and shouting loudly, the girl flied to the puddle that they call a swimming pool to heal her hand. Mika, the she-dog, her potbelly up, was already enjoying herself near the pool. Irma rushed to aid her darling forgetting even look at me. Sasha became bragging before Irma about her somersaults and all kinds of underwater magic, and the company was so enthusiastic about it laughing, howling and screaming together that I was disgusted.  Sasha commanded Irma to open her eyes under water to see all her tricks more clearly! Well, can one say something more stupid and impossible? Eyes wide open under water?

I sat under the eerie Cactus alone! Everyone had forgotten about me, and all of a sudden a longing came over me and before I knew it, I went wondering away from this friendly garden where Sashenka was a queen, and I was less than nothing!

Soon I reached the fence, but my pedigree elegance and famous claws overcame this little obstacle and I found myself on the hot sun-drenched street. I ran down the street toward the trees that gave some shade to passers-by. There I hoped to meet some beings who would prefer shades of these trees with lush foliage and nice flower bed around them. I reckoned there to meet some local wise cats and learn more about wolf-dogs in the neighborhood that had to be avoided. I was crossing the street when I bumped into a flowerbed covered with dark violet flowers in full bloom. Beautiful! A hummingbird was circling over this flowerbed! For an instant, in my mind eye, I was in the ancestral monarchy garden filled with bright colors and unimaginably beautiful birds, which we were allowed to hunt! The irresistible longing made me chase my dream, and I started after that little bird, as if it was the paradise bird from the garden of my real mom and my grannies in a faraway country Thailand! The tiny bird with blue wings with metallic luster flipped them so frequently that they became almost invisible. She literally stood over my head, and God, it was beautiful! And I missed the moment, when a gardener’s car showed up from around the corner, and… no, I felt nothing and now I have enough time to recall the details of my story, about cats’ real feelings and believes that we have nine, or seven lives. I have two lives and enough evidence to proof it!

…I am again ahead of myself, jumping from middle of the story to its very ending.

Let’s go back to the moment when I failed to notice the gardeners old track flying toward me from around the corner. Dreaming, I was not fast enough to make my move away from the spot where the  car would be in a sec and the car pushed me from behind so that I was whisked up almost to the very heavens. Falling back toward earth, I flopped down on hard concrete floor as a dead piece of furred meat.  I learned later, some blood was pouring out of my mouth, forming a nice red pattern around my grey body.

The gardener looked around, if someone was witnessing what had happened to him, a poor working man. His car hit a pet, obviously a darling of some local wealthy owner one of beautiful homes around. It was very hot day, and no one was on the street. The gardener, casting the last look around, picked up my corpse from the blood puddle, and tossed it into his smelly truck. In bushes he found a watering hose and quickly washed away the traces of my blood from the street, sat back behind the wheel, and away we rushed from the spot where the roadkill occurred. Perhaps, the gardener was convinced that he had killed a local cat, and was afraid to lose his job over this unhappy bustle, but he needed his salary badly to take care of his kids, wife and granny, and kids pets – a big family was counting on him!

But was I dead? Suddenly I was running along a pathway of an otherworldly garden. Its beauty was indescribable, exactly as in my royal visions before I was hit by the truck. Now I was facing a lineup of the beautiful booths with sparkling trinkets. In one of them I met my real grey mom with the same long legs as I had and a little colorful band on one of her legs. She stretched her two front legs in most fashionable way forward every time when she tried to impress somebody for various reasons. And it was how she was sitting on the ground waiting for me to come and greet her…  She recognized me at once, she sniffed and licked me all over, she cuddled me.  We settled in a secluded corner, and we sat there in complete silence. What a bliss it was to hear her breathing and enjoy her caress, and say nothing. Now I knew what real happiness was, and I forgave all wrongs inflicted on me by my earth mama Irma — every time she preferred her granddaughters showering them with her priceless attention.

Suddenly my mom became sad, tears started rolling down her cute muzzle. She reached out to me and whispered that she saw my earthly mother Irma printing leaflets. My gray mom had a spiritual eye, and she saw them falling out of Irma’s printer on the floor. On these leaflets, there were my picture and phone numbers to call, for someone who would see me wandering in neighborhood. Mama said that she knew for a while that this time she would see me shortly, but she said that she knew also that soon she would see me again and for good. She added that meanwhile she would tell everybody that I have grown big, beautiful and smart, and that I know so many wonderful things that they here have no clue about. She would tell them that I would be back soon, and explain everything about the wonders that people have created on earth.

I had also to tell something to my gray mother that on earth I was homesick and I yearned for it especially passionately when Irma was angry or irritated or overwhelmed with grandchildren’s improper behavior. Oftentimes, I saw her in my dreams, but she was prettier in her afterlife than in my dreams! Did I had time to say it all? My long legs started to melt, I was melting, and disappearing from my wise mother’s embrace. Some power was pulling me somewhere.

And I woke up in a pond, puddle, an abandoned and unkempt pool, whatever it was… I tried to open my eyes, to look around, to move my feet, rotate my neck and finally get out of the water. But every move made me feel like my all bones were broken. However, little by little I crawled out from the pond in the yard of a strange man on the outskirts of the city.

I dragged my wet, heavy body into bushes where nobody could observe me and started to shake off water out of my fur. I revolved my head so quickly, almost as quickly as the bird flapped her wings when I was hit. Would she admit her guilt?  But the affection of my mom in the garden of Eden, filled me with such love that now I was able to forgave them all – Irma, Sasha, Sonya, and the little bird that almost got me killed, and the poor gardener who could not handle his truck and hit me! I was a changed cat!

Suddenly I realized that I was terribly hungry and it was time to take a hunting trip for mice or a piece of some processed food! But where was I?  And how I would find my way home to Irma?

My mom whispered that Irma printed pamphlets, where I was pictured sleeping in her bed, and that my exclusive breed was still clearly recognizable.  If I happened to be in the backyard of the gardener who hit me, there would be no problems with getting back to the place where the road kill occurred. I asked for help from above, feeling that Irma’s granddaughters and Irma’s “guilt” was not so big as earlier, now they seemed to me pretty lovely beings, now I would not be jealous, if Irma would put Sasha’s and Sonya’s company ahead of me, because she cannot see them only for a very short time, when they are together, but when one day I would go back to the cats’ paradise, I would be with my loving gray mom together inseparable. And the truck driver was forgiven because he was tired, his eyes were dusty and hurting, and he was rushing home, and this was why he failed to slow down car in order to avoid hitting me…

And as if the thank for these letting goes the heaven obliged! I knew how I get home! All I had to do was crawl back into car quietly and let it bring me back to the place where I was hit, then I can be sure I would be in place where I would definitely find way home. I changed my food hunting plans. Now my gray skin served me well. I was not visible, especially at night and in twilight time. At evening, making sure that entire family had gathered behind the kitchen table to have their late dinner party, I crawled back into gardener’s track and hid under his various tools of trade, and fell asleep, as I was tired and hungry, and this way the time would pass faster.

At early morning, during sunrise, the stocky gardener sat in his truck, turned on the engine and my home coming was on the way. The car stopped near the place where I was almost crushed. I managed to slip out unnoticed, and started my slow strolls across the nearby streets.

Soon a phone rung on the Sashenka father’s desk, then the phone rung at Irma’s desk, next to her computer. She was asked to come as soon as possible to her son’s home, as Puma did not allow anyone to touch him, not the Good Samaritan’s who offer us their new and shiny cat carriers. Irma stopped whatever she was doing and stormed to Encino.

Irma couldn’t believe what she saw.  A small crowd was surrounding Puma, and no one could break cat’s resistance to enter any carrier. When Irma neared, Puma hissed at her for the starters, as if making her accountable for what had happened to him, as if saying, “I told you not to take that trip, but stay home. Next time listen what I have to say!” After such harsh reprimanding, Puma’s mood softened and he followed Irma to her car.

At home Puma, despite being hungry, quickly examined all angles making sure that there was no danger at home, and only then he started on food, emptying one can of food after another, until he had his fill. Then he started to jump in front of food, then he whiled at one spot producing a war cry in almost human voice. And concerned mom Irma hugged him, saying, “take it easy, you’re home!”

Puma calmed down and thought that yes, he had two lives, one before the gardener’s truck almost crushed him, and the second one after Irma came to pick him up in Encino, and brought him home. The first life, he had little liking for Irma and her granddaughters, but in second life, they seemed to him kinder and nicer, almost like his real gray leggy mother in the garden of Eden. She managed to give him so much love that now Puma was loving them all, even the gardener who left him to die in his pond.

But how he endured his nine days long ordeal? Puma did not know that an angel was flying by when he was tossed in the pond. The angel sent an undercurrent to move cat’s seemingly lifeless corpse toward a stone protruding from water near the shore. The angel guided the upstream to pull cat’s head and neck on the flat part of the boulder, as if carved for resting a swimmer’s head on that spot… Cat continued to sleep head on the stone bed and heal. Soon cat started to breath and clean air above pond made the miracle to happen, cat waked up to enjoy more love and beauty during his second life on earth.