It was raining. It had rained for the last seventeen days. That wasn't the only reason that I was on my third Seconal and fourth Drambuie, but it sure had something to do with it.

Suicide wasn't my goal that night, but I hadn't ruled it out either. The TMJ-- temporomandibular joint disorder, if you want the full medical term-- wasn't getting better and I was tired of sucking on soup and mumbling at my concerned neighbors through clenched teeth. I also felt guilty and without the means of making reparation to the one I'd wronged. After all, how do you apologize to the dead?

Winter had rushed the calendar and arrived weeks ahead of schedule in early November. It had been the kind of season where the cold actually leans on you until you're ready to buckle under the weight, your frozen bones snapping when you hit the unforgiving ground. We'd set new records for cold and snow for the first six weeks of the season, and then it had warmed up marginally and started raining. I didn't think it was an improvement.

It wasn't the dark and cold that was bothering me though. The fact was that I was more alone than I had ever been in my life. At this point Calvin was barely even a memory to everyone else, but not to me. In spite of all assurances of time healing all wounds, my heart was still a space filled with dull aching and there was no one to talk to about it.

But the worst of all my tribulations-- hands down-- was that getting hit by lightning thing. That had happened last October, on Halloween in fact, and ever since then the cats had been talking to me.

How sweet! you're thinking. She talks to cats. But that isn't it at all. I hadn't been talking to the cats. The cats talked to me.

And this isn't something sweet. Not at all, not even now that I'm more used to it. The implications are rather horrifying. Think about it. First, there was the little matter of this peculiarity making me question my sanity, especially when I was out in public and no one else seemed to hear what I was hearing. Leaving questions of my rationality aside, it wasn't like the cats and I were discussing Descartes, politics or fashion. Why would we? We don't even have species in common, we don't share a universal humanity. They crap in bushes and eat carrion and wash themselves with their tongues. Personally, I wouldn't dream of relieving myself in a bush and I am a very picky eater. Conversations with felines tend to run to demands for food and observations about how I smell. They follow me around, whining in voices that grate the nerves, repeating themselves incessantly. And by that night I was sick of it-- the sly feline voices pouncing on me every time I went outside-- the cold, the rain, the pain. Sick enough to take way too many pills and chase them down with the last of Cal's favorite liqueur. It was sink or swim time and I still didn't know which I wanted to do, so I thought I'd let the pills decide. If I lived to see morning then I would start swimming again.

Anyhow, that's what I was doing the night Atherton arrived. I didn't know his name was Atherton then. At first I didn't even know he was a cat. He was just a shadow hovering in my window, slightly more solid than the wet night behind him and the phantoms in my brain. It took him a few minutes and lots of name calling to finally get my attention. But once he did get it, I was all ears. This cat actually had something interesting to say.