What if Dean Koontz' Angel was a Cat?

For more than a week after Woody died, it rained. A few hours after we buried him the clouds swooped in like a big, heavy curtain and then the wind picked up and whipped around with a whoosh! and buckets of wet sky came crashing down.
I am big now.
*

4 p.m.
Woody’s Usual Walk Time

I walk along his favorite path around the yard, actually hoping to step in an old piece of his poo. There’s a little tree over his gravesite, and the bougainvillea hugs it. His grave marker arrives next week. I miss Woody so much the pain is real – like a dull ice pick pressing on the center of my chest, an orange blocking my windpipe. I speak softly to him, like a crazy person, then trudge back to the empty house.
Three and a half pounds – he was huge to me.
*

Back in the house, I shuffle through “To Do” lists, and find one from just last week: “Get SENIOR treats for Woody.” Our calico cat, Rebecca, rubs against my leg and walks over to the spot where Woody and I laid just hours before. It’s empty now, but she sniffs it delicately. Then she darts over to the magazine rack and starts smacking around a little piece of Styrofoam. She licks her shoulder and gazes at Woody ’s empty spot; looks out at the yard, the sky. She plops down and looks back at his new spot in the yard, her tail switching to the song of a bird outside. She makes a funny little sound in the back of her throat, gets up and looks in the corner of the closet where Woody used to go when the thunder was too loud. All the while, she has not meowed once.
*
Woody is hiding from me, and I can’t find him anywhere. I’ve looked in closets, even in shoeboxes and pocketbooks on shelves he couldn’t possibly reach, let alone curl up into.
Someone – Jen? David? A stranger? – leads me outside into the far corner of the backyard and points to a small mound of dirt.
“He died,” this person says.
I turn around and go back inside, calling him, telling him to stop playing now because really, really, this game has gone on long enough.And then I wake up.