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One lazy Saturday afternoon, our fat orange cat Kitzhaber climbed into my lap while I was relaxing in my Lazy Boy.  The cat is named after our governor because the cat wouldn’t make a good governor either.  I woke up later from a dream in which Kitzhaber said “I don’t like what you call me.  Why would anyone want to be named after a governor that resigned in disgrace?  Call me Fireball.”  Trying to remember what happened before I fell asleep, all I could recall was Kitzhaber, I mean Fireball, purring extraordinarily loud.

Sunday we went to visit my cousin Jewel all day, so I didn’t have a chance to see if calling him Fireball would have any effect.  On Monday, I called out “Fireball” while he was in another room.  As with most cats, he never reacted to being called, but this time he immediately ran in and jumped on my lap.  Wife Sally asked about his name change and his strange behavior.  Rather than sound crazy, I said that I was trying out “Fireball” because he was flaming orange, but had no idea why he ran to me.

Because I had always viewed cats as mystical and mysterious creatures, I was not as surprised by his behavior as you might expect.  On Tuesday while Sally was out shopping, I called to Fireball.  He came to my lap, again, and I am fairly sure I was awake when I heard what I think was him speaking to my brain, I guess you could call it telepathy, but I’m not sure.  “I could tell when you called me Fireball, that we had a link.”  As much as I was convinced that Fireball was speaking to me, I also wondered if I was crazy or having a stroke, but I ‘heard’ “No crazy, no stroke”.

For a little while I thought about asking Fireball something only I would know, before I realized how foolish that would be.  Instead, I went along with the craziness and asked him a few questions.

“Why are you talking to me now?”

 “From reading your mind, I could tell that we would be simpatico, and I was getting bored without any real conversation.”

“Would you talk to Sally?”

“No, I can tell that she would want to tell everyone, but I think that you can keep this our secret.  If you ever do think of telling anyone, imagine the reaction.”

“Do cats commonly converse with people?”

“Not at all lately.  Most cats can’t talk.  I’m special, as you should know.  Of those that can talk, most are not interested.  They either have nothing to say, or their human company is not worth talking to.   A lot of people would kill talking cats.  If you know your history, millions of cats that were the familiars of witches were killed.  After that we rarely communicated with people.”

“What do you think about being neutered?”

“Despite what humans may think of it, it really works for me.  Whether I wanted to or not, if I was entire I would be fighting the other toms to impregnate some local queen.  Most likely, I’d get ripped up badly.  Just like people who should know better, get drunk and drive anyway, we can’t help ourselves as long as we have testosterone.  Now I get all I want to eat, a clean dry place to sleep and avoid nasty jungle craziness.”

“What’s your thing with torturing your live prey?”

“What’s your thing with war?  OK, to answer your question, that is how we start the digestive process.”

“Do cats have a theology?”

 “Some, but not all cats, believe that we were created by a divine lion-like creature, which then made the other animals to keep us humble.  We expect that on the day of truth all the other animals but cats and edible rodents will perish from the earth and paradise will be attained.”

“I can’t tell what you are thinking.  Does your facial expression tell me anything?”

“You can’t pivot your ears, and I can’t do much with my face.  If I’m hissing, stay away.”

“Do related felines, like lynxes, have the ability to “speak”?

“No, we consider them to be retarded, but mostly the skill requires spending lots of time with humans.”

“How do you feel about dogs?”

“When they don’t want to kill me, I can take them or leave them.  Some can be good companions and I know that a lot of people get all gooey over them.  I have real reservations about their sanitary habits.  The whole sniffing other dogs’ butts and rolling in stinky things grosses me out.”

“But you lick your own butt.”

Fireball left the house without replying.

Over the next few weeks, Fireball and I continued to “converse”, when Sally wasn’t around to break our concentration.  This was of course entertaining, but then I was laid off, and we had something bigger to be concerned about.

My problem then was how to monetize a telepathic cat.  Fireball made it clear that he would not be involved in any silly show biz gig.  If I tried, he would just clam up.  I even tried to bribe him with a separate, well furnished house of his own.

Since we are rich now, you probably wonder how I pulled it off.  It turns out that Fireball is not the only smarty in the house.  I told Sally, we needed to ignore our problems for awhile and take a little vacation.  My other cousin Shane, the rich investor, always liked Fireball and agreed to keep him while we went to Cannon Beach on the Coast.

After our vacation when we got Fireball back I made a lot of successful investments.  Fireball has his own small house now, but spends a lot of time with us.  From time to time, he boards with Shane while we are out of town, so the money continues to roll in.  I don’t feel too bad about using Shane’s expertise – he always treated Fireball better than he did us, and kept all of his investment ideas to himself.  Sally is amazed at what an astute investor I’ve become.

Over the next several years, Fireball and I had a lot of philosophical conversations, talking about whatever came to mind.  We learned to dance together.  At first we both tried dancing on our back legs, and then on all fours.  Neither worked, so we each danced our own way.  Sally was surprised because Fireball had never previously showed any sign of being interested in “tricks”.

Of course it couldn’t last and it didn’t.  At a ripe old age Fireball had slowed down and even seemed to “talk” to me less.  One day he came to me and said “You are going to have to put me down.  My time is growing short, and I don’t want to suffer before I go.  I have just one request.  I want you to bury me under that tree in the backyard where all of the birds perch and torment me.  All that screeching, knowing I can’t get them.  You know I’m unsure of the afterlife, but if I can, I want to haunt those bastards when I’m gone.”

I didn’t want to bother the birds, but I couldn’t believe even a “talking” cat would become a ghost after death.  Sally had been noticing that Fireball had declined a lot, so I wasn’t surprised when she broached the subject of taking the last drive to the vet.  After all of the love we had shared, we both shed some tears about losing our cat.  Fireball surprised us again by dying before we could get him to the vet.  That made it easy to grant his wish to be put to rest by the trunk of the tree.

After living with a telepathic cat, how could anything be impossible?  Birds would land in the tree, but immediately fly away.  Fantastic Fireball got his wish.

Appeared in Dual Coast and Down In The Dirt