Mamamontezz's Mental Rumpus Room

Okay, so it's not an Easter Story...

A long time ago, back in the 80's, I had a very good friend who lived across town from where I lived. Jane is a pistol, was then, and I'd venture to guess still is. She was the closest I ever had to an older sister, and I love her deeply for it.

One day, on my way to her house, I was driving down the interstate and approaching the bridge over White River. A horrible smell entered the car, and my first thought was that some poor animal had died in the area and was rotting near the road. It was a wet, dank smell, algae and rot, stagnant and acrid. And it was getting stronger.

After a moment, I felt something. I felt something against the backs of my legs, like a cat rubbing its greeting. I looked down and saw nothing. Then I felt this "nothing" slip up between my knees to sit on my lap. Then the pressure of paws walking up my chest, as cats do, to sniff my face. The sensation was unmistakable, my cats do this to me now. After feeling little puffs of that dead smelling air on my face, it lowered itself back onto my lap, stepped back onto the floorboards, and was gone. The entire experience only took a few seconds, and no, I had not consumed any mind altering substances.

I arrived at Jane's house in a complete state of freak and amazement and shared my story with her and Barb, another friend who at the time worked with me. Ah, such fodder for humor, but I was sure it had really happened.

A few days later, it happened again. And on the subsequent trip, it happened again. The smell lessened, but the other sensations remained the same and sometimes were even stronger, more intense. I could feel whiskers now, and the form was more defined. Finally, Barb could stand it no more, and asked me to pick her up on the way to Jane's so she could "see the cat."

She was not disappointed. At the same spot where I first was found by this cat, it entered the car and stroked Barb's legs. She froze, leaned back in her seat as far as she could push herself. "It's here, isn't it?" I asked. "Yes," was all she could manage. It stroked itself on the backs of her legs, climbed onto her lap, sat down, walked its front paws up her chest, and sniffed her face just as it had mine that first day. Then it came to my side of the car, rubbed the backs of my legs, and settled in. It took several miles for it to finally fade away, and Barb was properly unsettled. I would have expected no less.

Now at Jane's house it was Barb who talked about the cat in my car. Jane, still a skeptic, just smirked and nodded, secure in her own skepticism that we were "full of it." After a while, we got down to the business at hand, which was our little "arts" sessions in the back room. When it was time to go, Barb and I went out to the car, and opened our doors.

From the front step of her house, Jane called out "Here, kitty kitty kitty." When I asked what she was doing, she said "Calling your cat." Sure, I thought, very funny. The cat had faded miles before arriving at Jane's house.

The next drive to Jane's house did not produce the cat. She asked if it had gotten into the car, and I said that it hadn't. No smirk this time.

A few days later, I get this very funny phone call. From Jane, I might add. "Come over here now and get this cat. It's driving me crazy." Seems she had started seeing shadows and movements from the corners of vision, dashing into the hall, around corners, into the kitchen. All of them was, well, cat sized. Dark little shadow with a tail. And apparently it liked it there. I never was able to coax it back into the car.

I miss that cat.

Posted by Mamamontezz at March 27, 2005 07:13 AM