It’s a fat lie, but my brother will tell you I murdered his cat. 

I love cats and mercifully Key West is overrun with feral inedible chickens (protected by law from manhandling and frying pans) and cats. However, ever since a few of my own kitties met with murky ends, I refuse to own. I cannot take the heartache.

Yesterday a friend, my most psychic friend, asked to stash her feline, short term. I leapt at the chance. I was so excited I rushed around readying my home to make it cat friendly when I was suddenly struck with a hideous memory and I froze, and cast back to a time, long ago and somewhere up in the mountains, when I babysat an old, inexplicably nasty, lady cat with lovely long white fur. Fur one could not touch without the sting of the claw whipping out to remove tiny slices of skin. Most cats are divine manifestations and then there are a few losers.

My brother’s cat was one such loser, so I didn’t’ move the thing in with me. Instead I visited the ferocious fur-ball and did the food and water thing once daily, in her own domicile. For the short time I was in her presence she hissed dramatically at me and scattered out of the way as if I was coming at her with a flaming torch and a skewer. 

One day, apparently, I did not fully secure the front door. I surmised this because when I returned she was nowhere to be found. I did the searching high and low thing, until I felt the first twinge of doubt. There was something about the silence, and suddenly I knew things were going to end badly.

I walked into the garden of fields of wild flowers rolling down to a fast moving rocky stream. The summertime winds had ravaged leaves and twigs and strewn them everywhere, messy confetti. Methodically I walked around the large house, a gnawing worry worming its way through me, until I detected a splattering of white bits pasted on a short slope.

I tried to hope against hope but the bits were the cat reduced to nothing more than tufts embedded in the tall grass.

This morning my psychic friend called to say, “I woke up in the middle of the night, I had a premonition. I’m going to find someone else to care for my cat.”

Phew!