Ergo, the Ogre

Today, Fandango’s Dog Days of August prompt is “Pets.”

It all started when my mom & I were trying to cross a busy street. There were lots of loud machines coming & going in both directions, plus it was raining. Mom & I were both wet and she was irritated. Finally she saw a break & thought we could make it across, so we ran.

Mom didn’t make it.

The big machine that hit her just kept going, like nothing happened, but right away another machine stopped on the side of the road. A human got out and picked me up and took me…  I dunno, somewhere. Everything happened so fast!

The next thing I knew, this other human came to get me and I lived with her for 21 years.

She took me to the vet and even gave me this gigantic name: Nicole Tatiana. Everybody just called me Nikki, though.

It was a good life. My humans were an absolute laugh riot. I used to do this thing where I’d stand by a closet door and whine really loud and look at the humans. It never failed, one of them eventually got up and opened the door to see what was in there, and I’d walk away. Then they would start laughing their asses off. The humans got such a kick out of that! No matter how many times I did it, they always fell for it. At least they were easily amused.

I lived with three other cats, too, but not always the same ones. Some went to Rainbow Bridge and then after a while a new cat or kitten would move in. For the most part, we all got along.

Many years passed and then one day, I noticed that mouths were moving, but no sound came out. At first I thought they were all playing a joke on me, but then it came to me that I wasn’t hearing any of the usual noises. No birds chirping, vacuum cleaner, music, no garbage disposal. Nothing.

The next thing that happened was little by little things got blurry. Each day, they got blurrier until eventually I couldn’t see anything at all. Boy, was that scary! Imagine not being able to hear or see. By memory (and smell!) I was able to make to the litterbox & back, but it took forever. My bones hurt like hell for some reason.

Sometimes I’d lose all sense of direction and had no clue what room I was in. Talk about terrifying! I’d start howling I think, but I’m not sure because I couldn’t hear myself. My human came right away and picked me up, which startled me of course, because I couldn’t hear or see her coming.

It got old bumping into walls and getting disoriented. That’s when my human began carrying me around everywhere. That worked okay but she didn’t always know where I wanted to go, or when.

I was ready to go and my human knew it.

So we took our last car ride together and now I am at Rainbow Bridge.

What humans don’t know though, is that The Bridge isn’t far from Earth at all.

It’s just behind a thin curtain-like thing. Like all the pets here, I can come back and visit whenever I want.

So don’t worry; you’re never really alone.