End Times Dream 

 

(Photo is Jamie and Raindance circa 1997)

 

Something was bad wrong and had been that way for a long time.  Only Jamie and I remained in the ruins of what was once Big Cat Rescue.  The sounds of the expressway were silenced.  No one drove any more.  Gasoline reserves were exhausted and there was nowhere to go anyway.  No businesses were in operation any more.  People were starving.  There wasn’t a single bird in the air, not a single rustle in the grass of a mouse or a snake or anything alive.  Even the plants were parched and it seemed the whole world sat in stillness waiting for death.

 

I had waited too long.  There were no vets anymore.  There were no magical injections that could bring the peaceful escape into the next life for my cats.  They were starving in their barren cells.  I couldn’t turn them loose.  There was no prey for them.  People had eaten everything that moved and I had protected these cats day and night from those intent on eating them too.  The place had been ransacked time and again, but I had been able to protect my precious friends, believing that things would change.  Things had to change.  Things had to get better.  I had been wrong.

 

Now it was obvious that I couldn’t prolong their waiting, their starving, any longer.  All I had left was an old .22 rifle that was taped together and a couple dozen bullets.  Not even enough to kill every cat if I were able to make each shot count.  I had to get face to face with the cats I loved most.  I had to pull the trigger and hope they died instantly and if not, then I knew that I had to use one more precious bullet to end their suffering.  I wanted to turn away.  I didn’t want to have to be the one to do this, but everyone was gone.  Every one but Jamie.

 

She was offering to help, but I couldn’t let her live the nightmare.  I could feed some of the cats to her and keep her alive a little longer.  Maybe something would change.  If salvation came, I didn’t want her living with the nightmare of what I was having to do.  I leveled the muzzle onto the back of Sugar’s neck and pulled the trigger.  She lunged forward, staggered, turned to look at me and fell.  She laid there bleeding from the tiny wound and an eternity seemed to pass.  Could she feel the searing hot metal in her flesh or was she paralyzed against the pain?  I couldn’t tell.  Her breathing was heavy… laboured…I raised the gun once more and she quit breathing.  She saved the bullet for her mate.

 

When I had to shoot Raindance I had shot several other cats already and had lovingly carried them into the now silent freezer.  I didn’t cry.  I couldn’t cry.  I couldn’t let Jamie see what this was doing to me.  I walked in with Raindance because she was smaller and it would be too easy for me to miss.  As she stood up on her bench plaintive crying in my face, I aimed for the back of her throat and shuddered back the trigger.  The bullet passed through the back of her neck, rather than her brain as I intended.  At first I thought that she wasn’t going to die.  She kept trying to talk to me, but blood gurgled up from the gaping wound, drowning out her last questions about why this had happened.  How different her world looked from inside a cage.  How could she understand that I had done all that I could and failed?  I carried her, still gurgling blood to the freezer.

 

I couldn’t stand this.  It was more than I could take.  Would I save a bullet for Jamie?  How would I ever be able to do that?  I suppose the thought of that was just more than I could take and I woke up.

 

This had been one of those dreams that seemed so real.  Every detail could be heard, seen, felt, smelled and although it seemed like a world gone mad, it seemed perfectly real.  I laid there in bed crying for a long time because in a very real sense this is what I face every day.  I had to turn away 300 cats last year.  I took in six and found homes for 4 more, but I know that when I say no, a cat is going to