From Midnight to Moonlight

By Bruno Misonski

Cats are amazing and unique animals, but what if they become divine messengers?

1+1=2, but what if you start to realise that 1+1=11 is also a correct answer? You sometimes hear about miracles, but what if you experience one in plain sight?

Imagine that your life starts to look like a dark and endless tunnel with no escape … But what if it is simply you that holds the key towards the exit?

‘From Midnight to Moonlight' answers all these questions and many more, but its main purpose is to help you raise your awareness in order to change your life.

This book is based on a true cat story — and it is also mine! All proceeds go to the WWF.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9780359386116

Book preview

Misonski

Copyright

Copyright © 2019 by Bruno Misonski

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First published: 2019

ISBN: 978-0-359-38611-6

Lulu Press, Inc.

627 Davis Drive, Suite 300

Morrisville, NC 27560

www.brunomisonski.com

Quote

‘Guardian angels acting through

animals is not unique. We see within a very

tiny band of light, and a rather limited

dimensional plane. If we could see the

things invisible to us, we’d

probably be overwhelmed’.

Chris Bishop

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank my Dear wife Viviane and, my amazing children Caroline and Thibaud, for the countless smiles they have put on my face, but also for their amazing support during tough times! Next, I’d like to thank my mum who made me read Lorna Byrne’s book, enabling me to start my spiritual journey! I’d like to thank my kindred friends and skywards, to my winged friends, from the bottom of my heart for always keeping me company and providing me with their spiritual guidance! I’d like to especially say, thank you Midnight, my darling and, thank you, Moonlight, my darling!. I’d like to thank the vet centre! I’d like to thank the authors who wrote the amazing books that helped me to raise my awareness even more: Lorna Byrne (already mentioned), Kyle Gray, Tanya Carroll Richardson, Eric Metaxas, Maria G. Maas and Theresa Cheung! I’d like to thank Deanne R., founder of my favourite Facebook group about spirituality! I’d like to thank Anthony C., Sharon B., Anne-Marie H., Grégoire M., Gaëtane de B., David M., Darla M. and of course my intuitive friend Véronique W.! I’d like to dearly thank Christiane D., and last but not least I’d like to particularly thank my great and amazing friend Gary Osborn, for always being there, and for his hard and incredible work revising this book and helping me to improve it!

CHAPTER 1: No biography

My story starts on the 21st of April, 1967, in northern Belgium. This is where I was born in the bathroom of the house where I was raised. Sometimes I joke about it, specifying that my birth didn’t happen in the bath tub, but would I start my storyline from this point, I’m not sure I would keep your interest. Do you want to read stuff from my childhood, like the fact I never seemed to be hungry when I was a child, until it actually became so bad that I needed to go to hospital? How I experienced school? About a fellow who once told me with his typical German accent that he had eaten too much and had stomach ache? I found that so funny that I started to have the giggles which lasted for half an hour till my belly started to hurt, while I should have stayed deadly serious! How much I enjoyed visiting our neighbours almost every day? What was my favourite hobby? (Citizens band radio by the way). Or much later, when I got married to my dear wife Viviane? What I felt when I saw my first child for that very first time? How and when my father sadly died? No, it isn’t and never will be my intention to write down my biography! I’m someone who doesn’t think very much about his past, so to write all about the stuff that once happened in my life seems just useless and I have zero motivation for it!

I consider myself an average person. No narcissism. No low self-esteem either. I’m a pacifist, but there are things in this world that upset me! You want an example? French fries! Belgium is the land of beer, chocolate, waffles and … Belgian fries! The best fries in the world! Donald Trump puts America FIRST. I put our Belgian fries FIRST! It is widely believed in my country that fries were invented in Belgium, not in France! So whenever I hear about French fries, I get the same reaction as when I read about conspiracy theorists claiming the earth is flat: such disinformation makes me feel uncomfortable. Do you remember what Obama said when he became president? There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America – There’s the United States of America. Translated into fries we would say something like: There are no Small fries and Medium fries and Large fries and Extra Large fries – There are just Belgian fries!. Maybe I have missed my destiny. Maybe my purpose in life is to be a Belgian fries activist.

Now you know, you will not read my biography, because from when it all started, in a bathroom in 1967, until the first thirteen days of February 2017, that period is just too average and should be classified as irrelevant. It is relevant however that a particular day changed my life from average to above average on the 14th of February, 2017. It was a coincidence it happened on Valentine’s Day. Or perhaps, it wasn't? That day was my worst day ever, in my 50 years of existence! I was in the deepest despair ever! That day I pulled a trigger. It was a life changing trigger, as much as someone putting a gun against his head to shoot himself. The trigger I used though, it didn’t stop my heart beating! The story I want to tell you is what happened, from that day until now and, you need to know that if you do ever feel (utterly) desperate one day, you shouldn’t hesitate to pull this same trigger! Let me tell you about it: it will not terminate your life but may change it in a way you thought couldn’t be possible …

CHAPTER 2: Midnight

What has changed my life is an animal: a cat; a black cat; a black cat who couldn’t miaow; a black cat who couldn’t miaow and was cross-eyed! Did you notice, by the way, that I said, "a black cat who couldn’t miaow? In English grammar, cats are often considered like objects in written language, so I should have said, a black cat which or that couldn’t miaow". You see, cats are far too remarkable to be treated grammatically like objects, so for the rest of my life, my feline friends will always be referred to as who and never again by which or that, both verbally and in written texts. Likewise, when the cat's gender is unknown, he will be used instead of it. Amen! Or like the famous quote from the Battlestar Galactica series: ‘So say we all!’.

Let’s perform a little flashback, six months prior to Valentine’s Day, 2017, to explain to you how that black cat who had crossed eyes and couldn’t miaow entered our lives during the early summer of 2016. I remember that the Belgian weather was quite good. We enjoyed spending time in our garden during those hot and sunny days. It’s so nice to lay down in an armchair; feel the sunrays heat up your skin while you read a book; listen to the birds; walk on the grass with your bare feet and cool down in the inflatable swimming pool; enjoy some ice cream that you eat quickly before it melts. I’m sure you know what I mean. Well, this black cat had definitely been observing us for a little while, but he was really scared, so he didn’t really show himself. Until one day our eyes met each other from a very safe distance: at least 20 metres was what he had decided to be safe. Our attitude of approach was to simply notice his presence, but we did nothing like in Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, to try to communicate with our black visitor. I need to mention here that what made possible communication even worse, was our two cats Pims and Gucci, courageously defending their territory against intruders. This scenario repeated itself a couple of times, so it became obvious that this new cat was indeed trying to say something. When a random wild cat starts to communicate with a random tame human, it’s most likely that the message you are supposed to decode is, I’m hungry!. It was my daughter Caroline who first got the idea to feed this cat. I remember very well how it happened: when I carefully approached him with a dinner bowl containing Pims’ and Gucci’s favourite dried cat food, he ran away because there was an infringement to his rule of the 20 metres safe distance zone. So I put down his food in front of our garage, where he had been standing before, and walked away. Less than two minutes later I noticed he had emptied his dinner bowl with enormous appetite! This moment is crucial when you are a cat lover, because once you feed a wild cat you invite that cat into your life! He came back for more over the next few days and, the safety distance got smaller and smaller. We noticed that he kept eating huge quantities of food, and we would find out later when mentioning it to our vet, that his daily intake was equivalent with what a German shepherd eats! It was when he took the calculated risk of just a couple of metres between him and us, that we decided to put his dinner bowl below the garden table which was standing in the middle of our terrace. Now we could see much better what he looked like, and we started to realise that our new feline friend was really in bad shape: all his movements were slow. His third eyelids were partly closed, and his pupils were hardly visible. We wondered how he was able to see! His fur looked dirty, and at least five ticks were feeding on his blood. He looked so old, we roughly estimated he had to be at least fifteen years old. We felt pity for him because we didn’t know anything about his past except his life must have been harsh, while we additionally had the feeling that he was an abandoned cat who may have suffered abuse and had chosen to live in the wild to stay away from cruel humans. We also thought that he had decided to come to us because he had no other choice anymore: his life had become a matter of survival, and without us, he wouldn't have made it much longer … I don’t remember exactly when, but it must have been towards the end of July that we were able to touch this black cat and start to stroke him. Our daughter Caroline was the first to notice his genitals, and she told us about his gender because you couldn't miss it. He was an entire male! It’s she also, who decided to give our new friend a name and she immediately knew it had to be Midnight.

CHAPTER 3: A new family member

I feel the need to clarify something: back in time I used to kind of hate cats, from my childhood right up until my forties! This was because of the way I was raised: my father, the alpha male of the family often told me so many negative things about felines, such as their cruelty with mice and how they chase (baby) birds in a merciless way. He was a bird lover you see. However, back in 2007 when my lovely dad passed away, I decided I was adult enough to perhaps reconsider my bad feelings towards cats. So one day we had a glorious opportunity, and we adopted Pims, a beautiful multi coloured cat, when she was just a couple of weeks old. Six months later four kittens were born in the middle of the night on the bed where Caroline was sleeping while it happened! We kept one of the kittens. This was Gucci (already mentioned), a gorgeous ginger cat who thinks the world belongs to him, and he’s probably right! Anyway, my bad feelings towards cats began to vanish, when I saw Pims for the first time! And now I love cats so much; that I buy calendars with cats; I have a large Yoga cats poster hanging on the toilet door and it shows thirty cats in different and funny positions; I have many books about cats including a bilingual dictionary Human-cats and Cats-human, and I have bought a grey sweatshirt with large black letters written on it:

‘THE ENTIRE CAT POPULATION IS MY BEST FRIEND’.

The bottom line is: ‘Only fools never change their minds’! Back to Midnight: we fed him well and took good care of him, so that he began to recover quickly, while becoming more and more invasive, and desperately trying to get more control over the territory around our house that was already Pims and Gucci’s property. His way to try to conquer this piece of land was unlike Napoleonic battles where you saw aligned soldiers with colourful battle dresses who seemed to shout, Hey, if you want to shoot me, I’m standing right here!. No, his methods were stealthy and sneaky, and more than once we saw him attacking Pims or Gucci from behind. So, obviously Midnight had become the dominant cat among our trio and, he had become even more of a threat. This was worrying to say the least! One day I noticed Gucci was injured by a claw wound on his back and you can bet I knew Midnight was the aggressor! The next day I took action because this was going too far, and I drove my car to the nearest swimming pool shop to buy a weapon: one of those giant tubular water pistols! I was very satisfied with my new acquisition, and today I can tell you I am even more satisfied by the fact that I never needed to aim this water gun at Midnight, ever. Did he read my mind? I mean, once I was ready to fire (water) at him, he immediately stopped chasing Pims and Gucci in our garden. Weird …

I have a smile on my face from ear to ear when I think of all those beautiful and sunny days last year after July, more towards the middle of August, when we were laying in our garden chairs, and Midnight used to jump on top of us to have a little rest against our skin. Let’s call this our Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind experience with Midnight, and the best part, is guess what? He started to purr! This was in contrast to his miaow sounds that we couldn’t hear. We knew he tried, and it was funny to see how he opened his mouth, and instead of hearing this cat sound we are so familiar with, we heard something very different, that was a noise that sounded like E.T.! To give you an idea: it sounded more or less like a short section (one third of a second), of the sound from the compressed air brake system you find in large vehicles like trucks: TSHHh! And to be more precise, it was rather a mixture of that sound and that of a controlled human sneeze when we tried to make it as silent as possible! I mean, like the kind of sneeze you can sometimes hear at a funeral mass, or in your doctor's waiting room! During the nights Midnight slept in his favourite bush near our terrace, but Caroline thought it was a good idea to put a beige coloured cat bed on the terrace that Pims and Gucci never used, so that he could sleep in it if he wanted to, and that's what he started to do every night! Caroline once took an unforgettable picture of him sleeping in that basket. Midnight was becoming more and more part of our family …

CHAPTER 4: From autumn until February

Autumn arrived and we kept feeding Midnight daily, but he wasn’t allowed in our house because the situation remained too conflictual between him and our two cats Pims and Gucci. So we found an alternative and we kept our conservatory door open just a little so that he had a shelter against the rain and the dropping temperatures. There is a glass door that separates our house from the conservatory and Midnight watched us so often through that door. Many times a day I fed him, provided him with water and, I also made regular attempts to let him inside.

I particularly remember Christmas time: I have a very nice sister named Roseline who is a nun in a convent in the South of France, in Cannes. Last year she was allowed to spend Christmas time at my mum’s house. It was also planned that she would spend two days with us at our house afterwards, and of course that included with Midnight, our new family member! She loves cats and she told me without hesitation that he had become her favourite cat because he was an abandoned cat and because of how sweet he was towards her! She liked to stroke him, and it was so nice to see my sister enjoying his company. I wished that the Christmas period with Roseline, when she stayed with us and our cats Pims, Gucci and Midnight would last longer than only two days, but she had to go back to Cannes. I will never forget these memories, especially those about her and Midnight being together, that meant a lot to me …

After the Christmas period, Midnight was allowed more and more often to stay inside our living room and kitchen, to my greatest satisfaction and happiness! This is because Midnight started to show a less dominant behaviour towards Pims and Gucci, but the rest of the house, and especially what we call the Blue room, were places where we made sure Midnight had no access. You see, Midnight sometimes urinated, probably to mark his territory, and the Blue room had a carpet that seemed to be his favourite toilet inside of our house! On many occasions I needed to clean his urine with water and soap and it was impossible to entirely get rid of the smell, because it isn't easy to clean a carpet! In January 2017 Midnight stayed most of the time in