I don’t know Miss Kitty’s past. She came to us at the age of six months and her personality was so different from our last cat. He was always with us whereas she would disappear for days on end. He would lay on the couch and sleep with me. She came in to eat, then left. While I was disappointed, I tried to love each of my children equally.

Then one cold winter night, she stayed in. During the night we heard a gosh awful howl, and it was Miss Kitty. It sounded so pitiful and heartbreaking. We jumped up and ran to where she was. She acted surprised, like “why are you waking me up?”. My husband and I decided she was dreaming and had a nightmare. This happened not once, but several times. Whoever heard of a cat having a nightmare?

Miss Kitty also has an awareness of firearms. One day she directed my attention to a shotgun my husband left out after a night of armadillo hunting. She started making little sounds in her throat and running over to it, like she was warning me. Clearly, she recognized what it was capable of. I wonder…are her nightmares and her knowledge of firearms related?