Jaci Dawn

I woke up in the fuzzy darkness that exists at 4:oo in the morning. I lay still, trying to fall back into whatever dream I left, but my body needed to get up. Sighing, I obeyed..

A black shadow of a cat rose from where it was sitting in the hallway. It turned and padded silently away, turning right into the kitchen.

I blinked.

I do not like hallucinations at 3:56AM when I am the only being awake in the house.

I laid back down, trying to shake the image off. Don grunted in his sleep and one of the dogs stirred in a kennel. The house was silent. No birds called outside and no rain dripped off the roof onto the ramp outside our bedroom. Silence.

Like a cat that doesn’t want to be heard or seen.

This house is not haunted. If it is haunted, it is a benign haunt. I’ve lived in haunted houses. I’ve lived with a poltergeist in the house. This house is not haunted.

So where did the cat come from? It wasn’t a shadow of Ziggy: he had no tail and this cat had a long tail. It wasn’t Nimrod: he’s still alive & enjoying the fat life at his new home. It moved like Smokey, but Smokey never lived in this house and she’s been gone for years.

I sighed. I got up and went to the bathroom and came back to bed turning no lights on. The house was silent, the night cat was gone: a hallucination left over from REM sleep.

It didn’t frighten me. Unnerved me some, but my heart rate never picked up. I’ve thought about it all day: Shadow Cat moving in the dark recesses, silently padding along the halls of my memories; Night Cat waiting for me to rise and the day to welcome it; Imaginary Cat left over from the Dream World, trapped in the dusk between night and dawn.