I am Cassandra.

Got banned again at FB today. Apparently, I was bullying and threatening the million dollar anchor with a million listeners called Chris Wallace. Like I could bully him or venture any threat against him, beside the fact that I am twice as smart and three times more ethical. Apart from that, I was never anything but an FB flyspeck in his ludicrous pretense at being his whore father’s whore son. Protested the ban, during which process I was allowed to say nothing. I heard back, without being allowed to say a word in my own defense: Three day suspension sustained.

Life as Cassandra is not easy. The seer nobody ever believed because the predictions were generally about impending doom and destruction. Thing is, I’ve been right on predictions for 30 years on the Internet. The ones who get the big money for their predictions hate me. I’m not bitter though. I have a Cassandra story of my own that makes me feel far from embittered. This one had a real grudge to bear.

Had someone I actually cared about, name of Cassie. Had a hard life. These are quotes from her last nearly nine lives.

Cassie

How old do you have to be to be a wise old cat?

What would she say?

“I’ve lived in the garage a long time. Seen them come and go. Dogs, cats, and always more dogs.

“In the summer it gets hot. In the winter it gets cold.

“You could count on that happening. Nobody bothers me much. I’m a cat who lives in the rafters. Life is… What life is. Running, hiding, lurking. But it will get better. One day.”

She’s fourteen. What does she know?”

A Vigil Now Over

No, I wasn’t strangling her. Get over yourself. 

She liked to be chucked under the chin, for hours.

We knew what was happening for several days. There’s been a vigil. Cassie was eating four cans of cat food a day and it wasn’t adding an ounce to her frame. Then she stopped eating altogether. No matter how many cans and flavors we gave her. Raebert went into a funk this morning. 

 

Raebert’s been in a funk. He knows. He always knows everything.

 

 

Okay. She was Fifteen. No big whoop, right? But in a way she was also One. A few years hiding under beds. Then the move here. Feral. She spent ten years in the rafters of the garage. Then she came down to my lap. Which she suddenly decided was her home. And where, after two long close weeks to me, she died. This afternoon. Just about sunset.

She was in my lap, you see. My wife and I were squabbling about Mozart. I wanted Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A, 2nd movement. My wife wanted to know if I needed to suffer musically about Cassie as well as viscerally. I said, the way husbands sometimes do, “Do it!” She started the YouTube video and Cassie died immediately upon hearing the first chord. Won’t make any attempt to explain or justify. She just died.

Spare you her sad little face and wasted body. She was fifteen after all. And her brother Mickey was my best friend. Why did she glom onto me? Do brothers tell sisters what’s going on in human world? Stop it. Cassie loved me, and I loved her. Now she’s dead, a small wild cat who never knew where she belonged. For ten endless years.

Never domesticated. Just like her brother and sister. She was a wild wild thing who just happened to like me at the end.

You know. Seven pounds of dirt and nasty and I’ll scratch your eyes out if you ever lay a hand on me. But this is what she was listening to when she died in my arms.

 

 

And when he heard it playing just now, Raebert came running up to join me on the couch. What do all the animals seem to know about Mozart so many humans don’t?

God bless you, Cassie, my dear. I will miss you till the rainbow bridge greyhound folks talk about.

Now Raebert’s gone too. But I still see him in the ghosts of night. You don’t believe in ghosts. Neither does Andrew Cuomo. I do. This I still hear playing in my head as Cassie was leaving. Couldn’t stop her. But I still hold her in my guilty arms.