The Peacock 482

 "Did Tobias", says Glen, "Embody for you the spirit of that house?"

"Yes."  Sheila pauses for a long sip of coffee, which I have observed that she is taking black and bitter.   "He was a very peculiar animal, with a very sharp psychic ability. "   He seemed aware of invisible presences, and often focused particularly on the apple tree.  His eyes would follow whatever appeared in his line of vision even if I couldn't see it.  He was also a peculiarly peaceful cat.  He never hunted or killed anything  Small birds appeared to feel safe in his presence.  That I found very unsettling: for example, one day I was working on that painting in the back yard and there was Tobias, lying on the grass, a beautiful small bird, a red finch, was pecking around in the grass just a few feet from him.  Tobias appeared to notice the bird, then chose to ignore it, and the bird didn't seem at all to mind."

"That is odd", say I.

"The destruction of the tree and house bonded me with the cat.  We became inseparable.  He only died just last year, already well past twenty.  Doug was trying to order me to have him put down but only because he had a pathological hatred of cats.  He did threaten to do it himself if I didn't cooperate, so that Tobias never left my bedroom, and for days at a time neither would I.  A horrible, awful, deplorable man, and then he presumed to abuse father Francois, but he seemed to be a typhoon of undisciplined energy and power.  No one could stop him.  No one.  And only the women. myself, Maureen, Jennifer and Sarah, seemed able to resist him.  It was constant civil war.  And now he's gone.  Thank God.  But it was when he started prancing around in that ridiculous bedsheet toga, and I could just no longer take him seriously. So, I said to him one day, "Doug, I didn't know you were a drag queen."  He couldn't answer, he just stood there looking utterly dumbfounded, then I started laughing,  Sarah and I had been having a conversation ant she joined me in the laughter and Doug just slunk away in utter shame and embarrassment.  That would have been just minutes before Melissa marched in to rescue Father Francois from him,,,,"