Hello. Let me introduce myself. My name is Carlos and lately I have been taking a lot of strolls around my neighborhood. I really enjoy it for a couple of reasons, which is why I have been doing it more frequently. On these strolls, I observe the neighborhood and how the passing of the seasons effects the way that the general vibe. A couple of weeks ago, with Halloween approaching, I began to see a few more black cats here and there. The closer Halloween got, the more cats I saw, until yesterday, when I saw only one black cat. He followed me home and is now living under my porch. It’s fantastic. But before this continues, I need someone to tell me, everyone else can see this black cat, right?

I need to know these things for the sake of my own sanity. I now have this cat who is presumably going to start to need things like food and shelter that I am going to have to provide. I don’t know if I can do that, I don’t know if I am up for the challenge. Plus, unless someone can come over and confirm for me that they are also seeing this cat, I could be putting a whole lot of emotional energy into something that doesn’t really matter.

Maybe you’re thinking, “Can’t you have someone just look at it for you?” Which is kind of rude to even consider, because it implies that maybe I don’t have friends. The thing is that I do have friends, but this isn’t the first time a black cat has followed me around and they are losing interest.

“Sometimes we see it, sometimes we don’t, it doesn’t matter,” one of my friends would explain. “All we care about is Carlos being safe and taking care of himself. As long as he does that, we don’t feel like we need to intervene.” See? They get me.

I need a pure neutral viewpoint on this, a stranger who I can trust not to lie to me. Until someone responds to my Craig’s list ad, I will just have to consider what might happen if it turns out that there was never a cat in the first place. That I have been buying food for this cat and taking time out of my day to play with him, all for it to be a hoax. I might lose it completely this time.

And don’t even get me started about bad omens.

This was written by Nathan Ellwood, who hopped on a train going west and when he woke up he was in Santa Fe. Soon, he would realize that this wasn’t the place he thought it was. Stay tuned for more soon.