I joined a book club I found on the popular website, meetup.com, because it had a snappy name, "Beer and Cookies Book Club," and I wanted to meet new people who had similar interests.

Little did I know my cat Henry would be gone within a few months of my joining this club.

Henry was a neighborhood stray who lived on the streets for a few years.  I didn't pay much attention to him at first.  Saw him scuttle away when I'd drive out of my garage.  After a while he was always popping up and I named him "Henry Helmet Head" as his head was so big.

Then my dog, Toby died.  Toby kept the cat population in the house down.  No interlopers allowed.  Just the kittens grown into cats that Toby helped raise.  Once he died Winston moved in from the garage where he'd been sleeping on an electric blanket drapped in a clothes basket in the winters.

Winnie was friends with Henry as they'd both lived out on the streets.  Once Winnie made himself at home it was only a matter of time that Henry would be welcomed as well.

 One day Henry clambered throught the backdoor to eat breakfast.  His ears had been bloodied and he looked rough.   I caught him, put him in a cat carrier, and took him to the veternarian to get him fixed.   They said the reason his head was so big was because he was a tom cat and the testosterone had bulked him up.   They also drew blood and determined Henry was FIV positive.

I decided to go ahead and get him fixed and I would read up on FIV.   Once I got Henry home he adjusted to domestic life very well.  He was in fact, the most affectionate cat I've ever seen.  He would push his way through the throng when I'd come home at night wanting to be fed.  Do all FIV+ cats eat as much as Henry did?

He was a scottish fold breed and I had never know a cat of that breed before.  His head got smaller as the testosterone wore itself away.  He did have bouts of full-blown diahrea and hit the litter boxes with only 60/40 consistency with me mopping up after him almost everyday.

But I loved Henry, and he loved me.  Once he'd eaten enough, and that boy could put it away, he would climb up on the couch to be near me, and  once it was bedtime, he had to have the plumb spot tucked in next to me with his head on his own pillow.

All the other cats accomodated Henry pretty well, and at first he was agressive with them, but two of his fangy teeth had fallen out on either side of his head so he couldn't have bitten anyone to do damage if he had tried.   That is the way FIV gets spread is through saliva to blood transmission, and I feel very sure none of my other cats got FIV,  including Winnie.

So we were doing just fine even when I got my dog Wesley.

The worse thing that happened is Wesley and Henry fought over the same table scraps, but for the most part I made sure they both had plenty of chicken, and hamburger, mounds of whipped cream sprayed on paper towels for each of them. 

So it was a sad turn of events when I signed up for the book club meeting to discuss Stephen King's book of short stories, "Just After Sunset."  I read a few of the first stories in the book.  Stephen King is always entertaining and many times scary.

Then one Sunday, Henry got a cold and started breathing belaboredly.  He didn't want to eat.  He didn't want to get on my lap.  The next day, early in the morning I got an appointment with the vet and they checked him out.  He was shutting down.  He contracted some lung infection or something because of the FIV and he was in discomfort.  We thought it best that he go peacefully with a shot.  I held him and kissed him goodbye.   To my credit he weighed 8.5 lbs. when they weighed him.  He died peacefully in my arms.

I picked out a vase for his remains and left him at the clinic to be cremated.  I went home to a much quieter house, with remnants of places I missed mopping up after his accidents.  How strange it all seemed.

And then I read the story in Stephen King's book, "N." where a man dabbling in photography stumbles across a field in Maine, I believe it was, and he is overcome with some evil when he finds monolithes sticking out of the field.  There are eight of them, but when he tries to get them in his viewfinder to snap a photo there are only seven or was it the other way around?

The main character seeks out a mental health practioner as having been to the field seeing what he saw he develops OCD and can't sleep or do anything except go back to the field to be a caretaker, counting everything, licking, washing the hands.

I won't tell the whole plotline, but the evil in the field manifests itself as an entity the man's shrink names "Helmethead"  as he out of curiousity looked for the field and found it.  Helmet head?  What are the odds I would have a cat named helmet head and die a few days before I read a reference to helmet head in a book?

And that is when I decided to put the book down, take it back to the library I checked it out from and vow never to read any more Stephen King as long as I live.

Also, during that time when I was reading the book, I had been walking my dog Wesley and found an envelope lying on the ground.  When I picked it up I found it was a U.S. Treasury check and was addressed to someone living just two houses over from where I was standing.

I walked up to the door of the house number on the check.  A woman comes to the door and I explain I found a check of hers on the street.

She comes out the door, with big huge eyes and starts yelling at me, "Who are you?  Who are you?"

And I try to explain I was walking my dog.  See, I have a dog.  Right here next to me on this leash!

"I had a dream this happened."  She says next with her eyes all bugged out.  

(I wanted to ask, "Oh, you had a dream a nice lady brought your treasury check to you and you acted a fool about it?" but I decided better.)

She wouldn't take the check from me at first and she started accusing me of mail tampering, but eventually, once I made an observation that it must be someone's social security check, that she got offended and took it from me.

How weird.  Like I was in a Stephen King novel with a crazy old lady.

So I got very rattled and disconcerted and grew curious about that story about Stephen King getting hit by a driver in a van.   I wondered if writing those stories brought on things that were better left alone into his life as well.

And then I found  out the man who was driving the van that hit Stephen King, whosename was Bryan Smith, died the next year  from an accidental prescription drug overdose at the age of 43.  They found him on the same day as Stephen King's birthday.   Life is stranger than fiction I guess.