a bad feeling

My mother is a bird rescuer. She is also a cat owner. She knows that this is problematic, but insists that with vigilance, both can co-exist. The vigilance falls on me most of the time. I am okay with this; I check the old cats to make sure they are breathing, let the young ones in and out, tap the fish tank to startle the goldfish out of its perpetual suicide attempts, and feed the multitude of birds. But then two days ago, just after I got home from dropping off the kids, one of the cats came running into the living room, tossing around the corpse of one of the baby birds.

This was not ok. It upset me a lot. I picked it up and sobbed into the phone. Found the cage door open. I was not the one to open it, but I should have noticed it when I got home, and I apologized over and over while wrapping the tiny thing in paper for burial. I had just sniffled myself calm again over a cup of coffee when there was a mass of chirping outside, and I went to the window to see at least a hundred tiny waxbills covering the lanai, hanging in every branch and stalk of grass. They hopped and sang for a minute, then flew off like a murmuration in miniature. I got very philosophical about it for a couple minutes.

So that was awful.

I started seeing death everywhere. There was a dead lizard in the bathroom. The baby tried to choke herself with my sunglasses. I considered sitting safely in the corner for the rest of the week.

related: I also started listening to Night Vale.

I might have mentioned my "visions" before. This could also be called "imagination", but at least one of them has actually happened*. Or I made it happen. Anyway, the best way to make sure that your predictions never come true is to announce them loudly and publicly, so here it is: while driving downtown, I saw a college girl sitting by the bus stop, and suddenly I had a clear idea that she was Zenny, at age 19 or 20, listening to music and feeling sad about her mother (me) who died a few years earlier of a long illness.
 

Thanks for that, brain.
 

To be safe, I am scheduling all my annual physicals for the next 15 years. Well, thinking about it, anyway.

* When I was 18, I drove to Hana with a friend while visiting from college. As we passed through the town, I saw myself living there, on a hillside, with two children - one running and one crawling. I was very happy. And of course this would never happen, it was impossible, because I was going to school for computer animation, and would be living in a big city some day, paying off my student loans and driving a mustang - HA.