Grey Lines

It's muggy and hot today making it difficult to do much around here.

My dreams have been steeped in the past but not in a bad or unpleasant manner. People, places and shades of my former self have been revisited as if it's meant to be a gentle reminder of how I arrived here. Issues that had once been stamped in black and white were actually grey and I was surprised upon waking.

It must have something to do with my sister visiting for extended lengths of time and the past coming up in our conversations.

Alabama's ashes will be here tonight and, then, we need to decide what we want to do with them. This is something I've never had to do before. We loved her, our grey cat, and respected her deeply.

The last comical memory that I have of her occurred about a week before her death: while in the front yard watering the gardens, I caught a grey glimpse scuttling through the hedges. My first thought was that Alabama had escaped from the house.

"Oh, no!" I thought. "She's not supposed to be outdoors." I ran alongside the bushes until they ended at the driveway, hoping to catch her and take her back inside.

Imagine my surprise when the grey line of fur became black, then black with a white line along its body and then definitely not my cat.

"Aaaaaack!" I jumped and ran inside.