In my dream the cat was talking
(as he sometimes does in dreams)
but I wasn’t paying close attention,
concerned about what he was doing:
working on electrical outlets,
his furry paws adjusting wires as he
Kato the mystical cat, at his desk
said that, in a past life, he had written
one of the Gnostic gospels —
Stop it, you’ll electrocute yourself —
But he kept right on working,
all the while talking about how unfair it was
that his gospel didn’t make it into the canon,
while Matthew’s did,
and Mark’s and Luke’s and John’s —
I didn’t get to ask him which one
of the Gnostic gospels he had written.
I awoke, and when I did, the cat
(in this world) was beside me in the bed,
staring into my eyes intently
as if to confirm the energy of my dream.
I find it hard to believe the cat could be Gnostic:
he who moves with such physical grace
could never split spirit and body,
could never denigrate the physical
to elevate the spiritual.
But this is the cat as I know him now.
Perhaps over many lifetimes he became
less dualistic, more incarnational —
and now, as his reward,
he gets to live a life of leisure,
well loved and tended
by a staff of caring humans.
He’s staring at me now, as I write this,
just as he did the other morning
when I woke up from the dream.
But the telepathic thought
he projects into my mind
is not about the Gnostic
but about the need for tuna.
A licensed professional counselor in private practice in metro Atlanta, Darrell Grizzle is the author of I Never Meant to Start a Murder Cult and Other Stories.