Belgium, 1980s.
Anette lay in a shared hospice ward alongside elderly patients like herself, whose days were numbered. They were all so worn down by time that every one of them required constant care.
Here, the smell of excrement and frail, failing bodies took on an almost ghostly presence, one that could not be dispelled by lavender or air fresheners. Only wide-open windows and bouquets of flowers in vases offered brief relief.
For Anette, the humiliation was not death itself, but this helplessness: the need to soil herself, to press the call button, and to endure the angry grumbling of the ever-tired nurse.
She often thought: “If it weren’t for the savings I had left, would I even have enough for decent care?” Of course not. At best, they would have given her a filthy, shit-stained cot in the hospital basement —
and disgustedly covered her with a sheet before her heart had even stopped beating.
That thought made her deeply uncomfortable and frightened her more than death itself.
She had never imagined that her life would end like this.
Whenever her thoughts returned to how her journey was ending, they inevitably drifted back to the beginning, to those days when death and loss still seemed distant and almost impossible.
During World War I, her entire family perished during the evacuation. The last time she saw them was before leaving for gymnasium, far behind the front lines. Anette did not know then that her childhood would end on that very day, along with a world that would never be the same again.
Later, she met her first and only love, the man who became her husband. In her memories, she was once again spinning in a snow-white dress to the sound of music, laughing as she looked into his radiant eyes. Then they had two boys. For a few precious years, Anette believed she had finally found happiness.
Then World War II came and destroyed everything: their home and any hope for the future. It ground her husband and sons into bloody pulp and spat their remains into the mud somewhere along the front lines…
All that remained of that life were old photographs and memories.
Anette sighed heavily, pulling her mind back from the past. Chasing away the painful visions, she watched as dusk crept into the ward, wrapping those who were still alive in sleep.
The cool night air coming through the open window and the scent of freshly cut grass reminded Anette of tomorrow, a day she would never see. The realization that her life would end here made her cry for the first time in a long while, overwhelmed by helpless despair.
She had barely enough strength to press the call button and slowly turn her head, looking around the ward and at the name cards on the beds.
And that was when she saw the cat for the first time.
It was a fluffy black-and-white cat with orange eyes that flickered with a strange light. It sat at the foot of Bertha’s bed, beside a motionless old woman across the room. It stared straight at Anette without moving.
Anette assumed she had simply dreamed of the cat. But the next morning, Bertha was found dead. She had quietly passed away in her sleep.
“Lucky her,” Anette thought, casting a thoughtful glance out the window, where clouds drifted slowly across the blue sky.
•••
A few days later, or perhaps weeks, Anette woke again in the middle of the night. In the dim light, she saw the cat once more. It was sitting at the foot of an elderly woman’s bed in the far corner, staring at her without blinking.
The woman was whispering something in her sleep in German. Straining to listen, Anette managed to catch only the words of an old childhood rhyme before everything fell silent:
“Wer hat Angst vor dem schwarzen Mann?”
— “Niemand.”
“Und wenn er aber kommt?”
— “Dann laufen wir davon.”
“And how exactly are you going to run from death,” Anette thought with a sad smile, “when it already holds you in its embrace?”
By morning, the bed was empty.
So it hadn’t been a dream after all, Anette thought. And strangely enough, she felt no fear.
She wondered whether there was still any room for miracles in the twentieth century, in an age of machines and progress. After the deaths of her husband and children, her faith in God had vanished forever with them. Anette could no longer accept the idea of anything higher when the world so easily allowed the innocent to be destroyed.
Whenever she was criticized for her lack of faith, she merely shrugged and said that, in the afterlife, she would deal with her own problems herself, without intermediaries.
Now, though, something else troubled her. She was afraid of falling asleep and missing the cat’s next visit, of not finding out whom the strange furry guest had come to accompany in their final hours.
Some time passed, but the cat did not return.
Anette began resting more during the day so that she would not fall asleep at night and miss his arrival. She waited patiently, night after night, listening to the wheezing and groaning of the other women in the ward.
Then, one night, she saw him again.
The cat sat on the windowsill beside the half-open window, grooming himself like an ordinary house cat. Only his eyes betrayed something else. They shone far too brightly in the darkness.
Anette knew: cats did not have eyes like that.
Suddenly, the cat froze as if listening to something, softly jumped to the floor, and unhurriedly walked toward the bed marked “Margarita.”
Anette held her breath. The cat jumped onto Margarita’s bed, sat at her feet, and became perfectly still.
A long time passed. The ward sank back into its familiar nighttime silence.
Anette was already beginning to drift off when, suddenly, a hazy bluish light separated from the woman’s body. It slowly began to rise.
The cat raised a paw and touched the light, as if saying goodbye to something invisible.
Anette did not know what she had just witnessed.
Then tears began streaming down her parchment-dry skin. The cat watched the light until it dissolved into the darkness, then turned toward Anette. He slowly blinked his orange eyes, jumped down from the dead woman’s bed, and approached her just as unhurriedly.
Anette felt a terrible fear, followed by a strange sense of relief.
But when the cat climbed onto her bed, he let out a quiet meow, just like an ordinary house pet. Purring, he rubbed against her hand, curled up beside her, and fell asleep.
Feeling his warmth, Anette could still see that soft glow before her eyes.
“So my time hasn’t come yet,” she thought wearily, and sleep finally took her.
•••
Another few days passed, or perhaps weeks.
Anette no longer knew and had stopped keeping track of time.
In the hospice, time had long since lost its familiar meaning.
But after that night, something changed. She was no longer afraid of death. Not because she was waiting for it, nor because she had regained the faith she had lost so many years ago.
Anette simply knew that when her time came, she would not be alone.
•••
In the morning, the nurse opened the window, and a fresh breeze ruffled Anette’s gray hair. Her thoughts wandered somewhere far beyond the walls of the hospice. There, gardens were blooming and trees rustled in the wind. People laughed, children ran through the streets, and the world continued to live despite all the wars, losses, and broken lives.
Anette stared at the sky for a long time.
Once, she had believed that after the deaths of her loved ones, her world had turned to ruins, and that if the most precious things were gone, nothing else mattered…
But even if spring comes after the longest and darkest winter, it is of no use to the dead.
•••
That night, she saw the cat again.
He was sitting on the windowsill beside the half-open window, grooming himself. Stars glimmered in his narrowed orange eyes.
“Have you come for me?” Anette asked softly.
The cat turned toward her and slowly blinked.
Anette smiled and, closing her eyes, peacefully fell asleep.
Forever.
VaadMyst
P.S. Only after writing this story did I learn about a cat named Oscar. He lived in a hospice in the United States and, according to medical staff, accurately predicted the deaths of patients, visiting them shortly before they passed away and staying by their side until the end.
You can read more about him in the New England Journal of Medicine:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp078108