lucid dreaming

chapter three

The taxi driver doesn't speak for the entire ride and I'm grateful for once. Normally I love to small talk and learn about what makes other people tick, but I still feel frozen in time at that moment on the sidewalk. The woman dropped me off right in front of my apartment building and I thanked her as warmly as I could even though there was a chill running through me, and I tipped her.

When I opened the door to my apartment, the first thing I did was come to my senses a little. The temperature is frigid in my apartment compared to the comfortable 75 degrees it had become outside, and the air conditioner felt like it was working overtime.

The last time I felt this strongly for someone it was for Todd. Todd was my first real boyfriend, the first boy to ever see the truly good, bad, and ugly side of me. We dated from the ages of 16, when he would drive to my house with his mom in the passenger seat of the car because he only had his learner's permit, until just one year ago.

72 hours ago, I came home to this apartment early from a check-in with my mother to see Cassie walking a pair of sock covered feet over the vintage rug in my living room. Todd was in

the kitchen right next to the door, shirtless brewing a cup of coffee. His face has yet to leave my mind. I'd never seen someone flit through feeling upset and confused and angry and annoyed and embarrassed and inconvenienced all at once until I turned that door knob, and it honestly haunts me in my dreams. I know a piece of Todd broke that day in my kitchen (probably his ego), but for me, it destroyed every part of me.

I decide since I didn't get any coffee with James like I thought I would this morning, I would close my eyes and take a nap to try to push all these emotions this early in the morning aside.

As my eyelids got heavier and the heavy weight of sleep held me to the bed, I felt myself floating away from my body, to the place where none of those thoughts mattered. All that mattered was going back to sleep, and letting my mind travel to wherever it chose.

~~~

The afternoon comes quicker than I expected. Cora is at my feet as soon as I toss them to the side of my bed and maneuver my slippers on. Meowing and purring and all, she is the closest thing I have to a child. If the sun shining in through the curtains I forgot to close last night didn't wake me up, she sure

would have. I giggle a little bit, and walk to the kitchen, trying my best not to be tripped by her little furry body.

I was always severely allergic to cats as a kid, so my mom never bothered to get any pets at all. Todd wasn't an animal person, and I went with everything Todd did. But after a week of coming home to a cold, empty apartment while he did night classes, I decided to go to an animal shelter downtown. I had my mind set on a brown kitten I saw on their website who's name was Venus, but on my way to the subway, I saw a stray cat walking on the other side of the street. Some strange instinct kicked in and I ran across and followed her lazy steps over to an alleyway. She never tried to run from me, just led me willfully to her sad little home behind a dumpster the city of New York seemed to have forgotten about.

I picked her up, never once thinking about fleas or mites, and turned around and went home. I never thought of that brown cat again after I laid my eyes on Cora.

I think she must have been too annoying to her last owner with all her meowing and begging, because it isn't everyday you find a longhaired balinese cat roaming the streets of New York without a collar or beyond a little tote bag on a woman's arm. I knew for that reason that Cora was sent to me. She was my soul-

cat, and I spoiled her. I also felt a stroke of luck in finding out that balinese cats are among the slim few breeds that don't particularly pose a threat to people with severe allergies like myself. So I snuggled into her long, gray fur any chance I could get, and she was my baby. Her breakfast was one of champions, a feast kittens only dream of. All her proteins and vitamins and some treats sprinkled on top. Some might say I'm overdoing it, but I'm only making sure to account for what probably felt like a lifetime of scouring for food outside to her. She was a city cat, through and through. Todd never liked that I spoiled her, and I never gave any energy to it. I always wondered, sadly and only at night, how she even managed on the lonely streets without being taken by someone with bad intentions, or, as sick as it made me, ran over by a car. That day I found her, I promised to never let her feel those nerves again. She would be pampered, and I never broke my promises.