A Cat Named Ember

Runner Up

Dual Inspiration

This post has been inspired by the name my good friend Alicia chose for Schrodinger's cat. 
That cat and his/her human companion have both passed into another realm while remaining in this one as a powerful presence. Much as we'd love to know the cat's name for real, s/he (does anybody know the sex?)  will always be tagged with his surname. One name for two beings.

On the other hand we have another cat, also occupying two realms at once, that goes by two names. She is the other inspiration for this post and for much else I am going to talk about.

In her avatar as Ember

This cat named Ember for the purpose of this post, is the mystical, mysterious, almost mythical being at the heart - and on the hearth - of a story being written by me. Ember has these glow-in-the-dark eyes that suddenly look at you from where the fireplace is set, in the northern wall of a seashore abode in a distant land. Her eyes catch the light of the glowing pieces of birch bark as they lull themselves to rest and are indistinguishable from them. Noone knows how long the bark will glow till the hearth lies cold and she stretches herself on the hearthrug. The fire has burned all night and she has been aprowl in the wild garden. They both fall asleep at dawn as the house awakens.

Two Cottages, Two Personas

In her Tully avatar

Ember has crossed the seas from another distant land that has similar dwellings with similar fireplaces. Ember has been a stray cat named Tully living in Tully Cross, Ireland. She "travels" with a friendly American couple who decide to adopt her for their second home, a little distance from the first one, in Maine (their reigning cat will brook no rival). In fact they buy a second home - a tumbledown cottage - and renovate it just to give her a home of her own. While Tully passes on (or does she, ask Schrodinger?) and is buried in Tully Cross, she lives and flourishes across the pond. 

Tully aka Ember has the pleasure of playing host to a group of undergraduate students from Maine who find themselves attending an all-night gathering of energies hosted by a group of traveling professors and students from India. 

Schrodinger and his beloved cat whom he addressed no less than nineteen times by the name that no-one knows, can be thanked for opening us to the possibility of being in more than one place at a time and thereby in a sense being more than one person. Ember by her presence draws Ireland into the gathering or transports her guests to that locale. Long before that crazy thought experiment started holding our minds (and sometimes our sanity) captive, books have served the purpose. We enjoyed the afternoon sunshine on our garden swings living simultaneously, the lives of each of the characters a book brought alive. Sometimes we were one of them, sometimes we were all of them, sometimes we were our own self, playing a character of our own creation in the story we read. That was the realm of fiction merging with the realm of our own reality. 

Today internet ensures that we can be in the same room together. While that room is an alternate reality, it coexists with this room, rather these rooms - the ones we physically inhabit. Down in time we could be teleporting ourselves, but would another self stay put at the source while one is at the destination? Is there indeed a separate source and  destination?

Unraveling Mysteries
As the gathering by the fireplace discuss such philosophical and metaphysical matters against a background of  Indian thought and culture that the hosts provide,  Ember slips in and out between their sprawled legs and books and papers. She is weaving the web that connects the realms as the narrative of the story unfolds through the threads of the conversation. Soon the crowd loses awareness of time or locale. This bridging of realms is what A Night's Tale will be about. And a million thanks to Alicia for adding a new dimension in the shape of "Ember the cat," that further energizes the story as it comes to life over the  weeks ahead.

Footnote: Read the posts for the other winners here
No Frocks For Prudes - 3
Piercing The Valley      - 1