Ode to Fido

It’s the tail end of the death-iversary of Lillith, the woman who raised me.

Its been 15 years, and still, she haunts me.

Her dedicated agnostic view always confounded me, and we would debate the issue, me at 6 years old, she at 28. I was wise for my age, or at least appeared so because of my gigantic confidence in what I believed. She was as full of swagger, as I was confident. She believed that nothing could be truly known about the nature of god, an unknowable being, so why bother investigating the issue? I believed she was wrong, that every conceivable question, also had an available answer, if sought hard enough. I believed god was not a remote unknowable being, but a very near and present partner in the world and in each life.

A couple of years later, something terrible happened. I was warned of the event three days prior, by a dream. It was the first dream I’d have of its kind, a death dream. The beautiful black and white cat I had hand picked just two years before, had been the runt of her litter. Now she was sleek and long and a fine hunter prone to leaving me gifts of bloodied mice and bird carcasses. She featured prominently in my dream, in fact figured in it. She ran past me through a door, someone (never saw who) slammed the door on my cat’s tail just before she could fully pass the threshold. Her tail was cut from her body. I woke in sweat, but still didn’t understand the importance of the dream, not for two more days.

Lillith awkwardly took me aside, her desire to comfort me was genuine, hence her awkwardness. It seemed very important for her to let me know, something had finally changed her mind on after death existence. She no longer believed that once you die you are snuffed out, like a candle. She no longer believed there was nothing on the other side of life but annihilation and the colour black. She looked quite scared as she said this. She said all this to qualify her next statement, “Bina, somehow, somewhere, I know your cat Fido will return to you. I don’t know how, but I know she will.”

Then she led me into the storm room, lifted some cardboard, and strode out of the room.

They said Fido had been hit by a car, but when I looked down at my beloved pet, I saw something strange, something odd about her neck. I reached out, I touched it, Fido’s head swung to the side at an awful angel. My cat’s neck had been slit, only eight years old, but the sight was unmistakable, ear to ear. I ran screaming from the room.