40 years ago,

Stacy was worried because the wound of her cheek caused by the cat had started infecting. She had taken anti – biotic medicines in hope to get rid of it.

"You shouldn’t have held the cat. And why the hell you wanted it to speak with you? It is a dumb animal, you know it." Amanda – her sister screamed at her when she pulled out the bandage from her cheek. Wound was healing fast since few days, "Now you better believe this - dumb animals are also dangerous."

Amanda brought her some more medicines, pulled out an antibiotic and said, "You will have to take this."

"No, I don’t want this. I am not swallowing this!" she screamed.

Both sisters laughed because Stacy had accidentally made a bad sexual joke. They laughed till her wounded cheek hurt again.

"Don’t laugh again or you'll end up making cut in the wound, again. Do you want Rick to come and see you with this scar on your face?" Amanda said as she tore the tablet out of the file.

"I am serious. I don’t want to gulp this. This is so big tablet!" Stacy told her again.

She handed Stacy the tablet and she also made a glass of water for her sister. Stacy clutched the tablet by her fingers and kept staring at it.

"What now? This is a tablet, not a lizard –" Amanda mocked her.

"I know what this is! You don’t have to remind me of it." She snapped and looked to begin sobbing any time from now.

"You shouldn’t be so emotional about a cat, all right." Amanda patted her.

"But father had sworn not to kill it!" she sobbed, "He chopped its head. How merciless he can be? Just because my pet scratched me doesn’t mean it should be killed!"

"You are being too much of animal lover now. Look, it gave you infection; you're lying on this bed due to fever just due to cat's scratch. The violent cat could have done this to anyone –"

"He wasn’t violent. It is me who has got fragile immune system! Father is a lunatic. He still doesn’t think I am not a girl anymore. He has got no right to kill my pet."

"He loves to you. This is why he did it –"

"Couldn’t he find any other way to show love?" Stacy snapped and didn’t care if she was being loud. In fact, she wanted her father to listen all of it.

Amanda said nothing for a while but she broke silence, "You are also dumb. You wanted it to speak. Now tell me, what do you want an animal to tell you?"

She wept and didn’t step for a while.

"You'd better gulp it!"

But she didn’t stop crying for a long time.

"You are too childish to believe what I am going to say." She sobbed again.

Amanda stood silent by demanding explanation.

"I had a dream of Rick. I had multiple dreams of Rick."

"He will come out of the war. It is normal to dream of someone you love –"

"I saw old Rick in my dream. I was eating something under table when Rick and someone else removed the table cloth then looked at me with amusement. I wanted to speak but I could not speak. I saw I was there with many of my friends. There were three of my friends. One friend had yellow skin, one was white as snow and another one was fat. We had eaten a lot of things a lot of time in Rick's house. We talked all the time."

"You saw this in a single night?" she was curious.

"It saw this dream for many nights. Rick used to come and I used to see him. I wanted to shout and yell his name but I was unable to speak anything."

"Bizzare. Dreams are dreams, aren’t they?"

"I saw Rick old. I saw I was kissing his foot for some reason. I don’t know why…"

"Foot, gross!"

"And when I was holding the cat, in reality, then I told the cat to speak. You will not believe but I heard Rick's voice come out from the Russian Blue’s mouth. For some reason it wanted to touch me but gave me a scratch instead."

"You need to eat this and sleep –"

"I am not lying." She cut him off, "What I am saying is true. I was having this dream for about a week. Do you want to know what I had seen last night."

"And what was it?"

"All of three my friends died…after drinking milk given by Rick. The old Rick. He killed all of my friends."

"And you believe this is real? Do you believe you were watching Rick, when he gets old, from eyes of someone?"

"Eyes of the cat! And I believe Rick also had spoken to me through the source of that cat." She snapped.

"You are wrong then Stacy, the cat is already dead. Father killed it. On the other hand, how the hell can a cat live for decades? Have the medicine."

Stacy nodded, wiped tears from his eyes then she held the glass of water handed by Amanda.

Amanda stepped out of the bed and turned towards the door, ready to leave. She walked few steps and heard Stacy gulp water.

She drank the full glass of water (which was unusual). Amanda looked her as she drank all the water while she could have sipped few times.

"Amanda!" she gasped.

"What?" she asked with her narrowed eyes.

Stacy clutched her throat and began to gasp and this time it looked very agonizing.

"Help – me –" she said in disturbed voice. She was unable to breath.

Amanda clutched her and punched her on back to dislodge tablet in her windpipe. But what came out were gasps.

After she heard her struggle to breathe, she realized the condition was no more in her hands.

"Daddy! Daddy!" she bellowed and ran outside the room.

She came back with her father and mother in less than ten seconds.

But Stacy had choked to death already.