A Strange Experience

Many years ago, when my grandmother was hospitalized, I was responsible for her care. At night, while sleeping, I heard a cat meowing. The hospital room was on the 7th floor, and the soundproofing of the room's windows was quite good, so normally, the sounds from the road outside weren't very clear. However, for those few nights, I would hear a cat meowing nearby as I slept, crying incessantly, until my grandmother was discharged. About a year after my grandmother was discharged, she was hospitalized again. This time, her condition was very poor, and she didn't have much time left. She had symptoms of seeing things, and once she mumbled in her sleep, "Oh, that's a cat, that's a life too." Another time, I heard a cat meowing inside the hospital room. After searching around, I discovered it was my grandmother making the sound. Her breathing had turned into a cat's meow, and it disappeared after a while. I told my father about this when I got home, and he said, "When we lived in Penghu, a cat used to come and steal food. Your grandfather caught the cat and seemed to have killed and eaten it, so what your grandmother said might be a memory from her past." My grandmother passed away a few days later. I wonder if my raising cats is a form of atonement for the actions of my elders back then. No one in my family raised animals, yet I always wanted to raise a cat since I was young, but my family wouldn't allow it. It wasn't until a few years after I started working that I began to raise cats. Perhaps it was this desire for atonement that kept me wanting to own a cat. On a side note, during my grandmother's last hospitalization, when I was resting with my eyes closed beside her, I saw her face. Her eyes and mouth were open, and a black snake was wriggling in and out of her eyes and mouth on that face. I found it incredibly bizarre.