The Cat Who Guided My Dad Home

I adopted Billy from the Toronto Humane Society. He was a scruffy, orange, wormy kitten with a terrible upper-respiratory infection. I knew his rehabilitation would cost a lot of money, but when this kitten looked at me we both knew in an instant that he was for me and I was for him. I named him “Billy” after King William of Orange, the king that most Northern Irish people revere. Because of this, my father — who had immigrated to Canada from Belfast — loved Billy more than any of my other cats.

Billy loved everyone. He would lie on the floor and wait to be touched. But he especially loved my dad. Whenever Dad came for a visit, Billy ran straight to him. My father had a terrible heart condition, and Billy had always been sickly, so these two creatures with their poor health in common became fast friends.

Later, I adopted a cat named Merlin without knowing that he had feline infectious peritonitis (FIP). That virus soon killed him and, two weeks later, took Billy’s life. I was devastated by the loss of my two boy cats, but Billy’s death had a significant impact on Dad. Only a few months later, my father’s heart condition worsened to the point where he had to be scheduled for his second bypass operation. He was given a 70/30 chance of making it, and we were excited at the thought that the operation might give him a new lease on life.

Dad had his surgery in the morning, and we saw him that afternoon. He was pretty much out it from the drugs he had been given, but he was able to tell us via sign language that a cat had been with him during his surgery. We didn’t know which cat he was talking about, and we thought he might be hallucinating from the drugs. We left Dad at the hospital that night and went home to get a much-needed night’s sleep.

That night I dreamed of Billy. In my dream, he was perfectly formed and vibrantly colored. I woke up crying from the warm feeling of seeing my dear friend again. I remember telling Billy how happy I was to have him back and that I was honored that he’d chosen to return to me. What I didn’t realize was that Billy was trying to tell me something in this dream.

When my mother and I went back to the hospital to see Dad the next day, there he was, sitting up, right as rain, and writing messages on a clipboard because he was still intubated and couldn’t talk. He told us that he loved us, and that he felt better than he had in a long time. He said he was going to get out of the hospital and go home. He offered to help me wallpaper my bedroom when he was well enough. We were ecstatic at his remarkable progress.

Continued on page 2: My mother broke down in tears... »