Once the light is shut off, Monika appears as always, purring aggressively, tail thumping on the bed. She snuggles gently beside me. My hand strokes her back and pets her face, finally resting on her feet.
Her silver feet.
Funny what you remember, and when. Suddenly I think of Mom, who used to think her "little silver footies" were Monika's most attractive feature. And I think of laying on the couch in Mom's living room on a Friday night, a week before she died, Mom stumbling repeatedly to the bathroom, breathing heavily on her way back to her bedroom, her health failing right before my eyes.
Monika laid with me that night, too, though restlessly, as if she felt enormous changes on the way, her purring almost desperate, so loud it nearly drowned out the Seventies Music Choice channel Mom played on the TV, Summer Breeze fading into Smoke From A Distant Fire fading into Ariel.
Morning came, Mom was weak and out of it. We ordered a pizza and watched ten minutes of the awful Gil Gerard Buck Rogers movie I'd brought for us to make fun of, then she asked me to leave. I went home and pretended things were okay. I called Mom that night, and she told me she felt better, but her voice sounded tired.
Monika now slips under a chair. Thunder rumbles, lightning flashes, and she's scared of storms. All I see is her tail, twitching, twitching.
