Better Late Than Never.

“Better late, than never!” They said those prosaic words at my funeral. From my point of view, at that very moment, I wholeheartedly disagreed. Sure it is better to have existed than not at all but I wasn’t finished with my life yet! I’d rather still be in existence than watching them shovel dirt over me. I was, even in this form, adaptive. I always had been. Much to the annoyance of any foe determined in my life to deter me from dispatching them. Well here I am. The shoe is on the other foot now, or more correctly, on the other side. 

Fake tears of my relatives and occasional friends, dried up as they walked back to their vehicles. All now absorbed in their new found focus of a visit to the pub. Drowning their sorrows was the next item on the tick list for them, while I had no idea what my next list was or if there was beer on this side. 

That’s something I’d miss. The taste of a pint, its creamy foamed hoppy froth that burst on my tongue. A mewing distracted me. There was a young black cat rubbing on my leg. I felt the static from its fur building up against my spectral being. The cat walked with confidence dragging me along with it. I shook my shimmering translucent limb trying to detach myself from the creature. 

It glanced back at me with, what I can only describe as a cocky smile of achievement, as it ducked behind a tree. We paused together, me tethered like a child’s balloon upon its side. Unsure whether the creature was truly aware of me I reached down to pet it and was rewarded with hisses, raised fur along its spine, growls and fangs a sabre-tooth tiger would have been proud of. It’s paw swatted at me and I felt the claws shred my phantom limb. It hurt, confirming enough for me that they indeed could sense me, and inflict disciplinary pain.

Content that my ghostly hand was going to behave, it began to rub against a nearby headstone and pulled from the freshly filled grave a companion for me. Again and again it moved through the graveyard selecting specific headstones to make its spectral withdrawals from, until eight of us surrounded the black cat, bobbing above it, light, buoyant and tethered. 

Content in the knowledge that cat’s were no more than a creature of basic needs. If it ran, kill it (after using it as a toy). If it didn’t run, lay on it and claim it as your own. If it was in season, well, you know the rest. But this particular cat had purpose. It was, a decision maker and walked with authority. 

Turning to my fellow attached spirits, we discussed what was happening and recounted our lives as much to bond, as to explain how we had ended up dead and stuck upon this cat. All of us were perplexed, especially the ‘cat lady’ who had mistaken the toxic tin of cat food as her tuna. Even in death the smell and taste of cucumbers repeated on her. 

It seemed to be taking its time as it flew us around the cemetery, until it paused against an older gravestone, rubbing its neck on the rough edges. We clustered together clinging to each others hands, as to travel in any other way above it had left us pulled and distorted Dali-esque across the paths it travelled. 

We felt the static energy build upon its silky black fur as it purred in a demanding whine calling to the corpse below ground. Out of the plot came the ninth spirit attracted to our flickering balloon-like entities. They sighed and gave a resigned smile. The grimalkin had led us to an experienced, cat travelling ghost. One that explained that cat’s have nine lives for a reason. The reason is ‘us’! We looked at him questioningly. He answered in a question; asking us why we thought a cat’s ‘nine lives’ had to be from its own supply? It erased our human ignorance in one sentence and reconfirmed the reputation of cats worldwide. Humans are convenient warm laps, who dispense food when required.

Our black mouser navigated through its short life contented. Knowing that instead of wasting its one meagre spirit on mortality, it could take advantage of human spirits, exploiting them as bodyguards as it was also doing to living humans caring for it. For each misadventure it experienced, one of us was sacrificed and disappeared to be replaced at intervals by a new spirit. The released spectres returned to their graves, awaiting and hoping the signal to ‘move on’. 

Not every ghost returned as a passenger upon a feline I realised. Where they disintegrated to after a kitty’s mishap, we hoped was to a place where there were no cats! The days merged into weeks and then months, punctuated with nightly cattish escapades, until only I remained. 

Unwillingly I followed the black cat wherever it trailed me, smiling and waving at the other spirits tethered above their own seatless four legged char-a-banc’s wandering through the neighbourhood. Along those journey’s I reflected on my life choices and the almost charlatan career I had manufactured around my dispatching poltergeists for a fee. I had spent my life as an exorcist, a religious celebrity in the neighbourhood, not once truly convinced in the existence of ghosts. How wrong I had been. 

Then the day came. I had was sat crossed legged above the now greying black cat’s tail. Having just admired its tidiness in the freshly replaced kitty litter, we entered the street then it happened. With a meek yowl it left its body after mistiming the home-time traffic. 

As the crying driver lamented the tragic death of the limp cat they petted on the road, I celebrated the severing of the wispy umbilical tether holding me in place for years. I found my transparent legs had lost their ability to function, so I flew instead, straight to the top of the church spire and held on feeling the freedom exhilarating. 

Time had run out for the cat but in my spectral state, it appeared, not for me. The wind picked up as I scanned the surrounding area I had grown up in. I watched the cars headlights begin to light their way home and saw the evening blanket of darkness enhance the Halloween decorations and costumes the children wore collecting treats. 

The clear night sky bejewelled with stars, promised a foggy carpet of mist over the ground the witches and spirits now gathered upon. They followed the living, envious of their life. My own, I had decided, had been enough. I wanted nothing more from it now. But I knew nothing of how to ‘move on’. So there I stayed throughout the night, stuck upon the metal spire, an invisible Christmas fairy who forgot how to walk and fly. 

I felt relief to see the sunrise beginning in the distance. Then became excited as the rays of light warmed my spirit as it bathed it in golden light. I could feel warmth for the first time in many years. The golden rays wrapped upon my soul and lifted me from the spire with the force of a vacuum cleaner on cottonwool. 

I drifted towards the rays, joining the other spirits being drawn into the light themselves. We smiled, linking hands as we flew gleefully together. As I reached the centre of the golden warmth and passed through, a mewing sound grew. I had expected a choir or trumpets. The cat sounds came as a surprise to us all. 

A cat was again rubbing up against my leg, circling and pleading for me to follow. It was the one I had been tethered to, but this time, I wasn’t. It glanced up at my face and gave that same cocky knowing smile. This time I felt its acceptance of my petting as I lifted it up. I walked with it in my arms joining the queues of spirits moving ever forward.

The cat leant its head into my chest and purred reflecting my contentedness. I had made it, finally. Better late than never indeed.