“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Give us a moment… The cat would have died that winter. In your terms it was a probable death. In a part of his reality he did die that winter. In your reality, you kept him alive. He had been closed up in that house over there, and went wild and terrified.

(The house in question, one of those decaying turn-of-the century Victorian piles, had squatted on the corner diagonally across the street from us. Jane often sketched it from our living room windows.

(Four years ago this winter it was damaged by fire. The family living in it was moved and the shell boarded up — with Rooney, as a kitten, trapped inside. A passer-by heard his cries days later and freed him. The house has since been torn down.)

The cat was a male. You and Ruburt originally called it Katherine, however, when it was still a kitten, and before you finally succeeded in coaxing it into your house. Rooney got into neighborhood scrapes, as Ruburt’s father did in bars in various parts of the country. The cat knew of the identification but was willing to trade this for several years of additional physical life, in which he also learned to relate to gentleness for the first time.

Ruburt’s mother was very much afraid of cats, particularly black ones. Now and then Rooney and Ruburt passed symptoms back and forth. The cat was not a passive receptor, however, and also learned from his encounters with your neighbor downstairs (who also has a cat). Many of Ruburt’s feelings about his mother are buried in Rooney’s grave. Rooney, though, is free of a distrust that he had carried with him this time, having to do with his background in that house across the way, and was grateful for those additional years you gave him.