Brentwood Historical Society

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My mother had a cat. It was an adult stray. There was nothing unusual about the cat except maybe the fact that it figured out how to ring the doorbell to get in. This was unusual because it could not have been an accident since the bell was up high and the staircase railing was thin and the cat could not sit on it. The cat must have seen people press the button and the door opened.

When my mother died, the cat came to me, since I lived in the house across the street. At the time, I owned the Arborlea Apartments and a tenant there told me that his cat was about to die. He asked me if I would dig a grave for it, which of course, I did. Well, his cat made an amazing recovery.

Sometime much later, my cat, who was around 18 years old, started to spit up. Since we had just had new carpeting put in, my wife insisted that I put the cat outside. It was raining and I felt sorry for the cat. I remember looking out the window and seeing the cat under the wheelbarrow. The cat looked back at me with a very sad face.

The next morning, I went to look for the cat and found it had died under the wheelbarrow. I felt very sad and guilty that she had died outside in the rain. When it came time to bury the cat, I remembered the grave I had dug for my tenant. Since the cat had spent most of her life at the apartment house, it seemed appropriate. Of course it dawned on me that Jesus was also buried in a borrowed grave.

About ten years later, I was sitting in a chair near the spot where the cat died. For some reason, I suddenly remembered the cat. I looked over to the spot where she died. It was a small trampled down spot where grass did not grow. I noticed something sticking out of the ground. The object was pointing straight up as if it had been placed there so as to be found. To my amazement, it was an arrowhead with a small point broken off. I remember thinking ‘What is going on here?’

I would say that this was as close to a supernatural event as I have ever gone through. It seems that when I was a kid, I always rooted for the Indians against the Cavalry. My favorite TV program was ‘Broken Arrow’. The show opened with Cochise breaking an arrow as a symbol of peace. Of course my arrow head had a piece broken off. Many times I had looked for one but had never found one. Could this be a sign of the cat forgiving me?