by Steve Vernon
When you live in Heaven, you can see almost all the stars. Once, when I was on Earth, there was a hole and Gina spilled rice on the floor. There had been too many to play with, too many to count! I’d never seen so many of one thing in my entire life on Earth.
But the stars you can see in Heaven—there’s more of them than all the rice anywhere!
Whenever I couldn’t sleep, I’d set my chin on the edge of my box and try counting the stars. But tonight, counting didn’t interest me.
It had felt good to work on the tree. When I was fetching the shinies and placing them on the branches, I forgot about being a missing piece. I stopped wondering when the rest of my family would be up here so I could live with them again.
I liked my friends—Rodney and George and Julia-Goolia—I liked most all the cats I’d met up here, really. And it was fine visiting Grandma and Grandpa and Sammy. But—maybe—wasn’t there something else?
My tail lashed.
Leave it to you to be unhappy in Heaven, Gingersnap.
No, I’d go down tomorrow and help decorate the next thing for Christmas. Rumor in the barn loft was that the cat condos were going to have a Christmas tree full of doves. I could do doves.
I’d decorate the rest of the year, join the yearly Midnight Rally on Christmas Eve to listen to the Nativity donkey tell us what happened that night in the stable…and then…and then…
I smushed my face into the dark corner of my box.
I’ll think about that later.
5
When I woke up, it was still dark (or at least, as dark as it ever got in Heaven with the shining rice-spill of stars). My box didn’t feel as comfortable as it usually did, but it was way too early to head to the decorating supplies.
My tail lashed. The missing piece feeling was starting to creep back in…
“Gingersnap.”
My ears perked up. The voice hadn’t been loud, but I’d heard it, clear as water.
“Gingersnap.”
I stood up. No cat around me was stirring.
“Gingersnap, come down.”
I looked down. Then I saw Him.
My fur puffed out, and I raced down the tree so fast you would have thought I was a squirrel.
He was waiting for me at the foot of the tree, bent down, arms wide to receive me.
I ran towards Him as fast as I could.
“My Lord!” I shouted.
I leaped, and He caught me in His arms and cuddled me. It felt like being wrapped in a purr.
I don’t think anybody can really describe our Lord to you if you haven’t seen Him before. The least you should know is this: his eyes are kind. And His arms feel safe and strong.
He rubbed my head in the middle of my brow, the good spot.
“Good morning, Gingersnap.”
I couldn’t do anything but purr, but He understood.
“Your friends are worried about you, Gingersnap. They’ve sent prayers to Me. I know you’re missing your family, Gingersnap.”
I nodded, suddenly filled with all the sadness you get when you have so many good memories of someone. Only I had many someones: Damien, who got me out of the shelter and never took me back, even though I’d only eat fries and buns and milkshakes at first; his mate Marie, who said she wasn’t crazy about me but who checked on me twice a night before my final trip to the vet…and Gina, their daughter, who I saw going off to school every day on the bus when she was a girl, and then only a few times a year when she went off to that town called College.
“Heaven’s good, my Lord,” I said. “Don’t be mad. But I miss them so much!”
He just held me while I missed them and hurt. It was OK to be sad with Him. Then I thought I heard him sniffle and felt embarrassed.
“Sorry, Lord. I know I’m just a cat.” I didn’t know what else to add after that.
“Oh…dear Gingersnap,” He said, and stroked my face. I sighed.
He sat there in Heaven’s grass with me in His arms. I don’t know how long we were there. Finally, he spoke again.
“Your family has missions on Earth that they must complete before I call them home, Gingersnap. But I don’t want you to be unhappy while you wait for them. Do you know what a calling is, Gingersnap?”
“No, Lord.”
“It’s like an invitation.”
I thought about it. “An invitation to another Housing?”
“No,” he said gently. “It’s an invitation to serve.”
“Serve?”
“Yes. Serve. Service is like work.”
“Work? Like a dog?” Pictures of leading blind humans around and sniffing human luggage at the airport flew into my head. Then I heard the way I’d said it and wished my tail were thick enough to hide in.
But He didn’t get mad. Instead, He laughed, but in a nice way. A reassuring laugh.
“No, not like a dog, not at all. When you serve in this calling, you don’t have to be anyone different than you already are, Gingersnap Cat.”
“Oh. Okay.” My tail swished once, then I stopped it. “You’re inviting me to serve? What will I have to do?”
“Guide alley cats to the families I need them to be in.”
“Hm.” My tail swished again. “Like that tour cat who met me at the Rainbow Bridge?”
He was smiling like He was trying not to laugh. “No. You’ll be one of my angels, performing your mission back on Earth.”
My fur puffed. “On Earth?! I don’t have to be a kitten again, do I?”
“No, Gingersnap. You’ll go back fully grown, like you are now.”
“Oh.” My tail swished a third time. He kissed my head and I felt better.
I hadn’t heard of any cats going back. Would that make me a ghost? Would I remember Heaven and all my friends here?
“The cats I will send you to need your help, Gingersnap. You know how to survive without humans, but you’re not afraid of them. You can teach the alley cats how to be near humans so they feel comfortable, and keep them safe until they’re adopted off the street.”
He says they need my help.
We sat there awhile again. The stars were beginning to disappear, blending into the brighter light of the sun.
“Do you accept this calling to help street cats, Gingersnap?”
I looked into His kind face again.
“Yes, my Lord.”
He set his warm palm on my head. It seemed to tremble a moment. Then he removed it and gave me a kiss on the nose.
“Thank you, Gingersnap. You’re going to do great!”
He set me down on the grass and leaned in. He pointed towards a sunny hill I’d never visited before.
“Go that way,” He said, “when you’re ready to get started.”
I butted His hand with my head to say thank you and set off towards the sunny hill.
6
The sunny hill was a lot farther away than it looked. It was almost midmorning when I reached the top. There wasn’t anything close by it—and you’d know, because it was a high hill with a killer view. But everything I could see—from my sleeping tree to Cleanwhisker barn—was fly-sized, and hard to make out in the distance.
I plunked down on the hilltop, scenting the air out of habit, not sure where to go next. My paws twitched. I wanted to get going on my mission, not stand out here in the middle of nowhere!
I turned around in a circle and yowled. Where did I go from here?
Rustle, rustle.
I hopped around to face the noise. A familiar brown-masked, blue-eyed face peeked up over the hill.
“Rodney?” I said. “What are you doing out here?”
He bounced onto the hilltop, smiling. Then, after a second, he pounced on me and we wrestled for a few minutes. Afterwards, while we panted, he answered, “I had a dream early this morning,” he said. “One of those Heaven dreams. It told me to come up here today and that I’d meet a cat and take him to the Hamper Hills. But I ha
d no idea it’d be you, Gingersnap!”
“Hamper Hills? Where’s that?”
“I’ll show you!” he said. I followed him off the hill.
I loved Rodney, so I didn’t tune out his chatter about the progress they’d made with the Birding league until fifteen minutes in. By the time we were coming out of the Etched Woods, he’d moved on to classic cat jokes.
“Why do cat guardians get on the news more often than dog owners? …Go on, Gin, guess!”
“I don’t know, Rodney, why?”
“‘Cuz they’re better at getting the SCOOP! Get it?”
I liked his love of the joke more than I liked the joke, which helped me chuckle.
“Oh, hey, we’re here!” he said.
The sky was getting dim, but the Hamper Hills shone in the twilight. I sniffed, inhaling the faint scent of fabric softener. The Hamper Hills were mounds and mounds of clean human clothing—mostly white, but in some spots other colors were sprinkled in like wildflowers. The mounds reached into the sky, almost touching the stars that were beginning to twinkle. Cats sat at the top of each mound, talking with each other. Something seemed different about them.
Rodney brushed my shoulder with his head.
“You’re leaving?” I asked. He was already looking over his shoulder at me, facing the woods.
“Yep. I hear you’re due at the tippy-top by moonrise, so you better shake a whisker!”
“What happens next?”
“Dunno. Figured you’d have all the instructions!”
His grin dropped and he turned around. He nuzzled my cheek again. “Hey, you’ll be all right!”
This was Heaven, so I knew he was right, but all the same, I didn’t want to climb the hills alone. All the cats up there looked like they belonged. I felt like a shelter kitten.
“Oh, Ginge, come on! A little excitement is what you need.”
He was right again. I started to tell him to go on back, but then he sprang up with a waul.
“All right, softiepaw, I’ll come up with you! But I’m not speaking to her!”
Someone a Siamese wouldn’t talk to? My tail curled, intrigued.
“Who?”
“Never mind,” he said, and shot past me up the first squishy hill.
All the laundry was warm. Now I felt silly for being a fraidy cat at the bottom. The cats on the laundry piles were just as relaxed and lifted their chins and tails in friendly hellos as we climbed.
The sun went away and the stars came out, but the warm laundry seemed to glow. I thought it would be a harder climb, what with there being nothing compressing the socks and shirts together, but enough cats had been through here that their paws tamped down a way sturdy as any garden path.
Me and Rodney were shoulder to shoulder when we reached the summit.
“What do you think they do up here?” he asked.
I shrugged.
Waiting for us was a soft-pelted bobtail cat with a glowing collar around her neck. It looked like it could have been made out of the bright moon behind her, a single smooth shape. Rodney, who had been telling me about his human’s clothes on Earth, muttered, “Oh good, it isn’t her.”
The bobtail leapt in front of me in one bound. Her shaggy shock of a tail wagged. “Are you Gingersnap?” she said. “You must be. There’s not a lot of time before you go back, so we’ll have to run through this quickly. Ooh, you’ve missed the entire orientation course!”
“WAIT wait. Wait,” said Rodney. “Ginge, you’re going back? As in, to Earth? How? And: are you crazy? It’s Heaven up here...HEAVEN!” He squished my face between his chocolate-brown paws. He was puffed up bigger than the stuffed llama toy behind him. I had to calm him down, but before I could do anything, the bobtail nosed him aside.
“Not a lot of cats get to go back, which is why it’s reeeally important he catches the next star down.”
“Star?” we said together.
“Yes, you’ll get there on a falling star. You’ll have until Christmas Day’s snowfall to help this kitten off the street and into his human’s home.”
“Christmas Day’s snowfall? I don’t know what day it is today!”
“You’ll feel Christmas in your bones, just like you did when you were alive.” She reached into the laundry at our feet and pulled out a toy cat with her teeth. The toy stood before me—white, except for a patch of gray on his head and a bigger blotch on his back, making his tail gray, too.
“Hey—I just met him yesterday decorating at Cleanwhisker. He’s down already?”
“Time’s funny up here,” she said, waving a paw. “He’ll be this size when you meet him. He needs to get to a girl named Nikki. Ughgh, oh, I wish I could at least give you the safety course. Listen, Gingersnap, while you’re down there, you can’t be hurt and you can’t die, but you can be discouraged, and sometimes that’s worse. Oh, and here.” She began licking her paw pad. Her collar began to glow. Her mouth twisted in a funny way and she licked her paw down to her elbow three times. Then— Whup! Whup! Whup!—she swiped her sticky arm on me!
“Heyheyhey!” I yelled.
Rodney’s eyes grew huge.
“Ginge! She gave you new stripes!”
I looked down. I could see one new stripe across my forelegs and another across my chest, breaking up my white blaze. Was the other one on my face?!
“Sorry,” said the bobtail. “But I had to give you your miracles before you go. Three per assignment.”
“Miracles!”
“Yeah, just little ones. They’re a drop of—you know—the STUFF, Heaven’s power. But you don’t have to use them all up each assignment, and you’re only supposed to use them for emergencies, and only to help in your mission.” She patted the toy kitten. “No making snackies rain from the sky just ‘cuz.”
“Um,” said Rodney, head twitching back and forth. “Are we moving?”
I jumped to the end of the laundry clearing and looked over the edge. The top of our laundry pile seemed to be stretching! The forest we’d come from looked a little like crumpled green Christmas wrapping, and was getting smaller every second. My claws shot out to keep me anchored to the ground. Good thing I didn’t mind heights!
“We have to meet the star when it arrives,” said the bobtail. “It won’t come down to us!”
Rodney came over and joined me. “Hey, I can see my condo from here!” He pointed with his paw.
“Be careful!” said the bobtail.
A few minutes later, the stars around us stopped. In the distance, something glowing was heading our way. I stood up, then jumped back into a crouch. The moon seemed right on top of us, close enough to lick.
I slunk to the bobtail’s side. “What else do I need to know?”
“Um…pay attention to your dreams, you could get messages in them. Or you might not! Oh, and if you see other angels, you’ll be able to talk with them, even if they’re human or a dog or whatever.”
The glowing thing was getting bigger. Now I could see what it was: a weird-shaped wagon, with two huge front wheels like cages. A giant star rolled around in the middle of each wheel as it drove closer.
It rolled to a stop at our laundry pile. Someone—a human—stood up in the back. He smiled at me.
The bobtail spun around in a circle. “Oooh! I know I’m forgetting to tell you something! I guess if you need to know anything else, you’ll get it in a dream!”
The man leaned over and opened a red door into the funny wagon.
“All aboard!” he said. When I stepped forward, he smiled at me. “Well, ain’t you a handsome fella.”
I like him already. Purring, I trotted into the red wagon-thing.
“Anyone else, darlin’?” he asked the bobtail.
“No, sir,” she said.
“How ‘bout him?” he lifted his chin at Rodney.
Rodney dove behind the bobtail. “Nuh-uh! Not me!”
The man chuckled, but nicely. “All right. Then we best
be off.” He shut the door. We were the only two standing in the wagon-thing, which was shiny and red inside. It reminded me of the backseat of a car, but with the seats and the back end missing. I prowled the bottom of the wagon-thing, looking for a good spot to curl up, but I got the horrible feeling that no matter where I settled down, I’d fall out the back once we got going.
“There’s a seat up here for you, buddy,” said the man. He pulled open the mouth to a fabric pouch, higher up. He let it go, and it stayed open. I dropped into a crouch, judging the distance, then leapt inside. I readjusted myself so my bottom was inside the pouch and my top was above it.
Now this was nice! There was a place for my paws to rest on the front lip of the wagon-thing, and I could see where we were going.
From up here, I could see the bobtail milling around in worry, and Rodney looking up at me.
“Good luck!” said the bobtail.
“Bye, Gingersnap! We’ll miss you!” said Rodney.
“We’ll be back up by Christmas,” said the man. He touched my shoulder. “Everything good? You ready?”
I nodded.
“All right. Chariot, go!”
WHING! The wagon-thing—chariot—shot out in front of the moon.
I dug my claws into the wooden lip of the chariot.
“Quite a ride, ain’t it?” the man asked me.
I nodded, but didn’t look at him; I was too busy looking around. The view while flying was optimal; you could see most all the Earth in one glance, though of course you couldn’t see any prey! But if something big was going on, you’d be the first to know!
“Name’s Dwight,” said the man. He had a brown beard and moustache, a hat, and big square fingers. “What’s yours, kitty?”
“Gingersnap,” I said.
“Good to meet ya.” He offered me his hand. I leaned forward and gave it a sniff.
He laughed. “Sorry! I was more of a dog person on Earth, but they told me this mission could only be done by a cat. Is there a better way to greet a cat?”
“Wait,” I said. “You know about my mission?”
“It’s the same one,” he said. “Same one I’m on,” he added.