just follow the cat

Part 10 - How to Tell the Future and Never Be Wrong

Monday, 3:00PM, November 22

the Moon of Falling Leaves will rise in 107 minutes

Don't blame the old for being old. They do enough of that to themselves. They spend their lives thinking that time will be kinder to them than it was to their parents and then they feel foolish when they realize they were always just like everyone else.

At one time, Aldrin Springlet thought he had pretty eyes. He thought his eyes were soft and welcoming like the eyes of a rabbit who has decided that it's okay to trust some humans. But then his lids sagged and the whites of his eyes took on a reddish-yellow color until they looked like they were saying "Get out of my way" instead of "I'm happy you're here."

At one time in his life, Aldrin Springlet thought his hands looked delicate. He thought they were the kind of hands that any woman would be happy to hold. But then islands of brownness erupted like flat volcanoes and his hands became the hands of an old man. But to be honest, the islands had been there for years already. Aldrin simply hadn't noticed them until the sun bleached away all the color from his skin. It was then that he realized that he had been old before he knew it. And by that time only the islands were left.

At one time in his long (long) cat life, Aldrin thought his hair looked like magazine hair. He thought it was soft and fluffy and that it caught the sun's rays and shined like an islay tree ready to drop its huge, cherry-red fruit on the happy world below. To him, it felt like each strand of his hair was lighter than light. But then Aldrin began losing all that soft fluffiness. His hair thinned so much that when he stood under bright lights, he could see the crown of his head. Everyone else could see it too. Even the ghosts in Room 902. And they couldn't have been more embarrassed for him.

At 3:00PM on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Aldrin Springlet pushed several hot pink 3 by 5 index cards under the in-between door connecting Room 902 to Room 208. The full message read, "The moon should be pretty tonight and I look forward to sharing it with you. Full moons are the best moons because they rise when there is still plenty of light in the sky. And sometimes they look huge when you first see them. It's like they got lost in space during the day and then they come very close to the Earth without anyone noticing it until the sun begins to set. But really, they're just moons. Some people think that moons, stars, and planets mean more than they do. But they're simply up there to pull the ocean waves higher, to hold all the other heavenly bodies in place, and to stand still without flinching as they absorb the blows from all manner of comets, meteors, and other fragments of star dust. Truly, they are just coordinates on a massive map. They are the x, the y, and the z. And in that way, they are nothing and yet they are also beautiful. Of all those objects that I will never see up close, the moon is the most beautiful of all. So, thank you for the reminder. I feel fortunate that you live next door. I wonder if someday we will meet. It seems that others in this motel know you already. This morning, I heard the woman who lives below you talking about the 'new person' who moved in. She said that person was a fortune teller. Tarot cards. Is that you? AS, 902"

Aldrin was going to comment on all the cards that he hadn't answered from the week before, but he worried that he had already gone on too long. Cassandra wanted to respond right away. She thought it was sweet that he took the time to write in such detail, but it was over an hour before she wrote back. She wasn't angry with AS; she just wanted to find her Tarot cards first and The Cat Named 208 had hidden them.

You might think it would be a lot of effort for such a tiny cat to hide all those cards, but Cassandra's Tarot deck was lighter than most. Many years before, she had discarded all the "bad" cards. "Nothing good comes from seeing something bad," she would say. So, it only made sense to get rid of cards like Death, The Devil, and The Hanged Man. She even tossed out The Tower, The Fool, The Ten of Swords, and every one of the Fives. Those cards had always looked far too depressing and she had no need for them whenever she cast anyone's fortune. But the card she hated the most was the Three of Swords. It had a heart with three swords piecing it. That was the first card to be tossed.