I am not Superstitious, but...

I’m Not Superstitious But…

           I’m not superstitious but this situation had me thinking right from the very beginning in such a way. There was a black cat, and it did cross my path.  I hope that people don’t call such superstitious stories ‘old wives’ tales’ anymore, especially as ‘on-line conspiracy theories’ would be much a more accurate a term. 

           I might not have seen it if it weren’t for the sound I heard coming from the direction of an old and tattered birch tree to the left of the path I was walking. It was a squirrel issuing a loud cry of warning that squirrels give when there is a potential predator around. I turned, saw first the squirrel, and then the black cat. 

           The cat answered back, but not in the way I would have expected. It did not howl at the squirrel. It more purred like it was trying to calm the squirrel down, to tell the small beast that it should not be considered any kind of threat.

           I was going to continue on my walk to the beach, but the cat looked at me rather intently.

           “What do you want, buddy?” Like many males, I pretty much address all dogs and cats as if they too are male.

           He then walked towards me, turned around, walked a bit the other way, and then repeated both actions. I had the distinct feeling that he wanted me to follow him. So I did. It wasn’t like I had anything any better to do anyway on the day.

           As we walked down the path together, the black cat leading the way, I wondered whether he (there I go again) was headed home.

           We were so close to each other that a passerby asked, “Is that your cat?” I replied with “No, but I think that the cat wants to adopt me.” He must have thought that I was being sarcastic, as he walked on an said no more.

A Deadly Discovery

           Not long afterwards, the cat stopped suddenly. I did too a few yards behind him, not wanting to pass him on the path. He stared very hard at the backyard of the house that was directly in front of us. Not knowing what else I should do I moved the branches of a tree by the fence so that I could see better what he was staring at. I began staring too. There was a gray-haired man lying on the lawn, not moving. It looked like an uncomfortable position, so I didn’t reckon that he was trying to catch up on his sleep there or was looking for worms for bait..

           I climbed over the fence. The cat leapt over it at a low point that he might have known about previously. The two of us went straight to the lying man. Checking him carefully, I discovered that he was still alive. He had a heartbeat, but was barely breathing. I saw that he had a ring on the fourth finger of his left hand, so I reckoned that his wife might be inside the house. I walked over to the backdoor, knocking hard and yelling with no success. While I was doing that, the black cat was licking the man’s face. He must have been the man’s cat.

           I would later learn that his wife was away visiting and caring for a sick sister.

           Unfortunately, I don’t take my cellphone with me when I talk my walks. I don’t like to be disturbed by people asking me for money when I am trying to achieve some peace of mind.

           So I went back over the fence, the cat now following me, and headed as fast as I could to my place. That was the closest thing to running I have managed for years. When I got home, the cat stopped short when I opened the back door, not responding to my invention to ‘come inside boy’. I called the emergency line, but realized that I didn’t know the exact address of the ‘lying man’ as I referred to him. However, I could inform them of the street he lived on. I told them that I would be waiting in front of the man’s house for them. There was a few seconds silence, but then the person on the phone agreed with my plan. I said nothing about the cat leading me there. I wanted them to take me seriously.

           The cat again led the way back to the lying man’s house, and the two of us slipped through the thin space between the side of the house and the fence, the cat again leading the way. That made me think, not for the first time, that the cat belonged to the injured man.. We didn’t have long to wait before we heard the siren. The panic in my voice must have encouraged them to hurry.

           The first-responders followed me through the side route to the backyard, the cat slinked after.us as if he were part of the crew. They didn’t want to drag the ‘lying man’ through the route we had just taken, so I suggested to them that we take him to a path to the road that intersected with the path the cat and had taken back and forth earlier. They thanked me for my ‘local knowledge’. When they asked me whether the cat following us was my cat. Not wanting to experience the joke failure of before, I simply said ‘No, we’re just friends.’.

           After they left, the cat and I walked back to my backyard. I wanted to go to the hospital to see how the man was faring, so I got into my car. I could not encourage the cat to join me on my trip. He just responded to my open passenger door with a rather plaintive meow..

At the Hospital

           I went to the hospital, bringing a book with me so I wouldn’t get bored or depressed (the latter is the feeling I often get whenever I go to a hospital), while I waited to find out what the outcome was for the ‘lying man’. After about two hours, the doctor that was treating him asked me to come into the patient’s room, saying that Edward, the injured man was conscious now and doing well.  

           When I entered the room, the ‘lying man’ began talking to me.  He told me that he had bumped his head on the brick wall while bending down to pick up a tool that he had dropped. My mind’s voice said, “And I thought that I was terminally clumsy”, but my mouth’s voice did not say a word.

           He thanked me profusely for, in his words, ‘saving my life’. I replied that I was not the only one to thank, but his black cat was the one that directed me to him. He gave me a questioning look, and said, “But I don’t own a cat. And I certainly wouldn’t own a black cat.”

I refrained from telling him that believing they were bad luck was just an old husband’s tale.

           When I returned home, my new furry friend was waiting for me, and was willing to enter the front door when enticed with tuna slopped into an old dog dish that would now be his.