Tonight was my last scheduled reading for A City of Ghosts. It was over at The Front Porch at the Scarritt-Bennett Center and it was wonderful. There were maybe twenty people there… maybe not quite twenty… but I would say that most of them I did not know in person. I knew a bunch of folks from Twitter but there were also a bunch of people I did not know at all.
And there were cookies shaped like ghosts!
It was just awesome.
And then I came home in time to do my stuff. This is the seventh night. Usually, I am done before Halloween, so I wasn’t sure what tonight would be like, but I knew what one does when one is doing what I’m doing on Halloween.
So, I took a candle and went out over the creek and stood between the creek and the back hedge, between the earth and the night sky, and found the milky way, and raised my candle and waited for whoever needed a light to find his or her way.
And then there was a great rustling in the brush and I called out, “Hey, stop that nonsense,” in case it was a coyote coming too close in.
But it was just the new kitty, who had, apparently, come out of nowhere to walk me back to the house.
And so, I followed, my candle over my head to light our way and I got to the back of the house and the regular light came on. So I blew my candle out.
There was a huge crash behind us, but I didn’t turn around.
Most nights, a thing like that could make a gal jump.
Nights like this, you follow your cat home and trust that whatever is out there is taking care of its own business.
You do your duty and leave the rest to the dead.
Still, I was pleased to find that the new kitty knew what she should do. You can’t teach cats anything, or I can’t anyway, so I’m kind of tickled to see that she gets this.
Tiny Cat Pants 
In Celtic tradition, cats often help guide people back to physical reality when they’re in danger of getting lost in the other world. It sounds like new kitty may have been playing just that role for you!