Beyond Borders

Beyond Borders

By Joseph Parish

Humans are peculiar creatures with a sort of strange temperament, their minds most often amuse their psyche with unusual tricks. These mind performances frequently deceive the individual, and trigger an element of confusion between the reality of the moment, and an active imagination. I would volunteer that this oddity of nature was precisely the case involving my cat C-Dee, and myself. I obtained C-Dee as a pet when she was a mere kitten of only six weeks of age. C-Dee had essentially grown up with me from my first year in high school until her untimely demise.

From the very beginning, our lives were intermingled as we shared an analogous "free bird" style of disposition and usually got along quite well with each other. I would be sound asleep in my comfortable bed in the morning, not really desiring to get up, when C-Dee would leap onto my cot, and begin nibbling lightly on my ears, in her effort to wake me up, as if she knew it was time for me to get ready for school.

In the evening when I would return home after a busy day, C-Dee would be sneakily hiding behind the living room door. It was uncanny how the cat could sense exactly what time I was expected to make my entrance through the front door of the home, and begin my journey through the living room. Each time the door was opened and I walked in, C-Dee would patiently wait for the proper moment at which she would then leap out from behind the door as she mischievously attacked my leg. It was kind of amusing watching her dexterously hold onto my leg, as I traveled from room to room around the house.

Even though I was an active teenager with a demanding social schedule, I always managed to render the necessary time to entertain C-Dee, which contributed significantly to the eventual bond established between the two of us. Visitors would repeatedly comment how C-Dee would act more like a pet dog then she did a feline.

It was not unusual to discover that in the middle of the night, C-Dee would linger, patiently waiting until she was convinced that I had fallen fast asleep, and then she would stroll down the hallway towards my room. Being an older home, and having no form of carpet upon the hallway floors, I could readily hear the cat's paws as they scraped and dragged over the boards of the floor, slowly making her way towards the confines of my bedroom.

Upon arriving at my bedroom, C-Dee would swiftly leap onto my bed and proceed to cuddle up across my legs and feet. This ritual was predestined to become a nightly ceremony, and I can imagine with a degree of certainty, that both C-Dee and myself-looked forward to the act each evening. Since C-Dee had grown into a very large cat, it was easy to distinguish when she leaped upon my bed, as I was instantly awakened long enough to detect that she had laid herself across my legs, at which time I would once again doze off.

I memorized that fateful day, when I had been given several Alaskan Husky dogs and was attempting desperately to locate suitable homes for them, when my cousin arrived for a visit. Knowing the dogs in question, she was given strict orders not to remove the dogs from the basement since their combined strength would easily overwhelm her. One evening as I returned from school, I felt an odd sensation. My heart felt heavy with sadness, but at the time I had no explanation as to why. As I opened the door of our home and proceeded to walk into the living room, I was greeted by a frightful sight. No sooner had I entered the room when my eye quickly caught the two powerful Husky's busy mercilessly mauling my cat, C-Dee. I ran to the location of the attack and try as I did, there was simply no stopping the dogs, there was no way I could get them to release the cat from their clamped jaws. Poor C-Dee died helplessly in my arms that evening. No longer would I walk into my home and find the playful cat hiding behind the door. No longer would I awake in the early hours of the morning to the playful nibbling on my ears. Those days were now gone forever and all that will remain with me are the memories.

I took C-Dee's death very hard and was understandably distressed for several weeks after the incident had transpired. I was still too young to fully appreciate the concept of death, however, as such I was bothered greatly by the incident, so much that I experienced difficulty sleeping in the weeks ahead. One night as I lay in bed and pondering the events of the past several weeks, and despondently thinking about how much I missed C-Dee, I finally managed to fall asleep. During the early hours of the morning, I was abruptly awakened at the all familiar sound of the floor boards in the hallway. Fear hastily overtook me and my imagination drifted in all sorts of morbid directions.

"What could it be," I thought, "Perhaps we had a burglar in our home".

As I lay trembling with my blanket held close to my face, I all of a sudden, I felt the bed shake slightly as if something had hastily and forcefully vaulted onto it. Within moments of the jolt, I felt overcome with a warm feeling flowing across my legs. For some bizarre reason, I now felt calm and no longer afraid, while within mere seconds I was once again sound asleep.

After several days had passed and as I began thinking about that unique evening, I vividly remembered the series of events as they had occurred. I clearly recalled all the sounds that I had heard and what transpired prior to my dozing off again. Although the complete situation appeared to be a bit odd to say the least, I decided that it must have been my mind playing havoc upon me, or had I witnessed C-Dee coming back to provide me with one last minute of comfort before moving on? Perhaps we shall never know for sure.

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