Memories

MEMORIES

The cat curled into a ball in the rocking chair and drifted into the time and space between sleep and wakefulness. Cool breeze from the ceiling fan coiled around him, ruffling the hair on the back of his neck. The hum of the fan and the breeze mingled until time and space blurred and the familiar room melted into tall Wyoming grass whispering across the plains. He was remembering…remembering, not through his own eyes but through the eyes of his ancestor who had traveled from Independence to Oregon in 1845. The tall grasses waved and the breeze blew as he hunkered beneath a shrub, watching…

The men from the wagon train squatted by the campfire, hand-rolling cigarettes and speaking of the crops they would plant when they completed their journey. Children ran between the circled wagons and women cooked at an open fire. Darkness descended on the travelers and the sound of a guitar echoed across the desolate plains.

As the moon crossed the dark sky, the fires died and the cat climbed over the wagon wheel and snuggled with his little mistress in their wagon.

The scream of the guard startled him awake. A burning arrow pierced the canvas above his head and flames shot across the wagon. The air reeked with the smell of blood and burning canvas. He heard his little mistress screaming. He leaped from the wagon in terror and dashed into the underbrush, watching the nightmare unfold before his eyes.

When the sun rose, all that remained was the smoldering ashes of nine wagons, two butchered oxen and 37 dead men, women and children. The Indians were gone. The horses were gone. The food was gone and he could not find his little mistress. A faint wisp of smoke from the blackened wagons was a grim reminder of the horror of the previous night. Pangs of loneliness and despair gripped his heart and hunger seized his belly as he slunk lower into the weeds.

A tiny scratching sound in the tall grass nearby brought him to a standstill, motionless, whiskers forward, eyes dilated, every muscle tout. A mouse poked its head out of the grass. Memories of his ancestors stalking their prey filled his head, moving stealthily in short burst, pouncing...and he knew…

He crept forward on silent feet, heart pounding.

He leaped.

One bite on the back of its neck and the mouse was dead. He gulped the warm flesh and licked his foot, tasting and hating the unfamiliar taste of warm blood.

He turned from the gruesome site and began walking toward the West as the wagon train had done so many days before. His human family was dead. He must go on alone. Survival was the only thing that mattered now.....

The cat lifted his head toward the whirling fan and blinked, remembering his family was descended from this ancestor who safely reached the West Coast on another wagon train.

He often experienced his ancestor’s memories as would his descendents assuredly share his. That’s how it is with cats. Humans called it instinct, but cats know that even a kitten remembers her ancestor’s memories. How else could she know how to lick her foot and wash behind her ears and, more importantly, how to stalk and kill her unsuspecting prey?

The muscles in his left hip cramped and the cat straightened his leg to relieve the pain. He sniffed and shivered, not with cold, but with the knowledge that things were changing and he waited, like the others before him, for the unfolding of events, as the dreams were always a harbinger of changes to come.
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