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Happy Birthday, Drogon Targaryen-Targaryen!

Do you have questions about life, love, work, cats, sleep, tennis, hair, coffee, sex, hopia, music, dogs, space, ink, paper, travel, anything that matters? Ask The Oracle!

Post your questions in Comments or @jessicazafrascats on Instagram. Then go and feed a stray cat, or watch A Quiet Place. By the time you come back, your answer will be waiting. Quick! The Oracle gets bored easily.

* * * * *
From Shona.

Happy Name Day! I hope to survive April, the cruellest month. Will I be able to?

Drogon says: Of course you will survive April. For starters you have to drop T.S. Eliot (It’s only temporary), and muse on other lyrics about April. I do not mean “Early morning, April 4,” because we know that the assassination occurred in the evening. Also: assassination.

I suggest e.e. cummings. Not April-specific, but spring.

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

Believe that all will be well.

Next!

If you’ve heard this story before, please accept my apologies and move on. I bring it up again because something similar has happened to my friend.

Eight years ago, during a particularly bleak period in my life, I had what I like to think of as a visit from the future.

In retrospect, I had no more reason for despair than I do now. However, I felt like I was trudging through a dark tunnel with no end in sight. Usually I am very good at cheering myself up—why else would I read so many novels or watch so many movies—but I was convinced that I would never get out of that cave. I knew I was being irrational and self-dramatizing, but I could not help it.

Mercifully I could still sleep nine hours a day even in this state, so my mind could take a break from thinking about itself. Early one morning—it must’ve been just after sunrise—I woke up from a deep sleep and saw a figure in brown robes standing at the foot of my bed.

Immediately I doubted the reality of what I was seeing. I had the impression of an ancient person calmly watching me sleep. It was a dream, I told myself, then I noticed my cats crouched on either side of me like marble library lions. They were wide awake and staring at the foot of my bed. Which, when I looked again, had no one there.

Here is where it gets truly odd. Instead of leaping out of bed, inspecting my house for intruders, or taking my temperature, I went back to sleep. Suddenly I felt better. The darkness had lifted.

Someone said it was a Jungian archetype: the wise old person, mentor, or guide. She thought it significant that I had been comforted instead of freaked out. Since that time I have thought of this split-second incident as a message from the future: nothing grand, just, “You’ll get here.” My visitor was myself.

This afternoon I was having merienda with Chus when he told me about his own visitor.

Early this morning he was awakened by a noise. When he opened his eyes he saw a small boy in a striped t-shirt rummaging among his papers. He said, “Hoy!” The child jumped onto his bed the way children do when they want to play, and Chus held his arm up to keep the child from landing on him. Except that the child had vanished. And Chus went back to sleep, untroubled by this home invasion.

“Could it have been you?” I asked Chus, and he said he thought so. What was he trying to tell himself? Was there something in his past that he needed to remember?

Of course, it could’ve been a dream. Or a product of indigestion. Or a trick of the light. But wouldn’t it be great if our past or future selves could show up once in a while, to remind us where we came from and assure us that we’re going somewhere? You are haunted by the memory of a figure at the end of a jetty. That figure is you yourself.

I can’t find La Jetée online anymore.

Can I just say

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

And then: Told you.

This is my favorite poem by Robert Frost, which I found in a compilation because I did not like “Mending Wall”, which was constantly assigned by teachers.

Some say the world will die in fire,
Some say in ice
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

P.S. It’s Lyannaaaaaaaaaaa

We don’t know Drogon’s exact date of birth. He just showed up on our doorstep three years ago, when he was about a year old. Shortly afterwards our eldest cat Koosi died at age 14, and following the Roman Church’s practice of taking a date of significance to the pagans and assigning it to a Church holiday, we declared that Drogon would have the same birthday as Koosi, April 12. Happy Birthday to our white, blue and pink baby dragon! Yes, Drogon looks like those birth announcement cards.

Today, Drogon is The Oracle. You can ask him anything. Post your questions in Comments.

For instance: Drogon, is Jon Snow truly dead?

Drogon: Nope. R+L=J.

Drogon likes attention, hugs, and parkour.

Happy Birthday, Drogon Targaryen-Targaryen Hiddleston Cumberbatch! The vet says he was about a year and a half when he joined our household and we picked a birthday for him. It’s also the birthday of Koosi, who would’ve been 16 today.

Koosi

Whenever our feline masters celebrate their birthday they deign to read your future. This week Drogon is The Oracle. To ask a question of The Oracle, you must go out and feed the first stray cat you encounter. Then look into Drogon’s eyes and post your question in Comments and await his reply.

White Walker-blue eyes.

We have readers who ask the same question every year (pertaining to acquisition of boyfriend, more desirable employment, or both). If you want a different answer, try rephrasing it.