Then the cat rubbed itself against her face and she awakened, recalling that the elderly man in the dream was a distorted version of the lover who had made her into this child's mother. She had not been meek when she went to Houston to pursue a graduate degree. She had hungered after the assistant professor because he had been as inaccessible as Antarctica. She had successfully obtained him and this was due to the fact that people loved those of a strong will who seemed immortal in inexhaustible energy, swinging their machetes beyond diffidence and forging paths and realities boldly. This sort of energy being erotic to them, they were attracted, mesmerized, and orphic to the id?e fixe, which was nothing other than everlasting youthful vigor. The assistant professor, yearning for immorality, had coupled with her. It had been a successful wish and a successful coupling because from it she had gotten pregnant. With her sleeve, she wiped her face that sparkled in greasy sweat, and then gently cradled the cat to her face. The cat scratched her and leaped away to where it once again hid itself behind the books. Gabriele's cheek bled but still she did not kill the cat. She didn't know the reason her hands, pulsating in rushes of vengeful energy, did not catch it and crush it in her fingertips. At that moment she did not know her reasons for anything. She tried to stop the bleeding with the back of her hand, for the bib near her feet was unusable since it was fuming in vomit. As she looked at the swab of blood that was there on her hand she felt a void careen into her (or herself careening into the void), heard a parents' declaration to depart from her, and again felt the impact of being rolled on by a tank. She imagined the cat deliberately paralyzing itself in the actions of the prey it had often witnessed. She imagined it praying to the earth for a delay of its execution and subsequent decomposition by having the earth force compassion on Gabriele, the executioner. She imagined it praying to the earth that magically brought it into life to shrink its size into something so much smaller than a cat in order to be at all. She did not know why it happened. She just did not kill the cat but instead watched it masquerade itself as dead. Gabriele picked up the cat by the neck and the four eyes met. The cat did not swipe. It concentrated on cowardly prayers and of remaining limp. Gabriele tossed this other "criatura." It landed on top of a book on Freud on the lowest part of her bookshelf. Chapter Nine