The Next Life

I'm sleeping on a velvet tartan rug on a white pewter chair in a tiny garden. There's a bird house in the corner, where bluebirds and starlings and robin redbreasts sing songs of freedom as they steal their share of nuts and seeds scattered within. In the middle of the emerald-green grass sits a fishpond filled with carp and roe, that often steals my attention for hours, as I sit and contemplate what water is, occasionally dipping my paw into the pool at the fishy reflections below that I can never reach. Are they real or just a dream, above me or below me?

In the bright orange sunlight of a lazy late afternoon summer sun, I leave my chair and wander over to the pool again, and gaze into my own blue eyes, curtained in long trimmed Persian white hair, and I wonder is that me, or a friend who has learned the secret of the water and lies within. I take a sip of the water, and one lap of my tongue disturbs the surface, and my reflection is turned into a flowing mosaic of white flakes and sunny glints. And I notice a dark cloud reflected too, somewhere hidden in that mirror of the sky and sun above. I wait, transfixed by the water as it settles, but I begin to realise that the dark patch is not a cloud in the heavens above me, but another cat, dressed in a coat of brilliant black shiny hair, and hypnotic hazel eyes.

Is that a dream too? I raise my head and you are sitting on the other side of the pond, watching the fishes too. There's an instant calmness in my soul, no threat or panic, only a feeling that I have felt before, a long time ago, in another life. You meow to me, and I walk around the shimmering water to meet you, and it feels like I have known you for lifetimes before, and all of this one before today. We touch noses and from that moment we are inseparable.

You live next door, where there's a children's climbing frame that we often play on together, and an old oak tree with a knot of root at the bottom where we can lie together and watch the bees in the wild orchids that are grown by your owner, a gentle grey-haired woman who bakes all day long, and never forgets to feed you. We sometimes sit together and watch her knit, amazed by the needles moving so fast and the web of colours that she somehow makes appear from the bottom, and we think she must have been a spider once.

My owner is a long-haired writer, and the middle of his desk is the spot which catches the afternoon sun at its best, and on the red leather next to the wonderful chess board, we play with his pencils and chase bluebottles together, when they wander in from the air. And he never complains when he needs to write, and we are curled up together on the warm leather in that sun. He uses it as an excuse to visit your owner next door, and chat about things we will never care about or contemplate, and eat cakes that we don't like to eat. But the baking smell wafts in through both houses and the aroma seems like home.

At night we chase fireflies and in the orange glow of streetlamps we run down concrete roads and feel completely free, under the blanket of a million white fireflies that don’t seem to move, and which we never wonder about. And sometimes, under those full moon skies, sitting on my velvet tartan rug on that white pewter chair, we can catch a look in each other’s endless eyes and remember for just a second a dream we once had, but slipped away. And without any words of which we don't know why or how to say... we just know that the dream came true eventually and we are both thinking it at the same time.

There is no concept of time anymore. Just us two cats, black and white, blue and hazel... exploring this tiny but infinite world together.

And we are content...