Cats

I once had a cat, which

came home at eleven PM, one night and I

asked him, sweetheart, where you been? He did not

reply, and that was when I noticed he was wet-scraggly hair,

coat looking like a duster- I talked to him, he went out, to

sit in the balcony, lifting one eye to look

at me for a minute. He looked like tragedy.

Naturally, I followed him: Cat, where you been? It

hasn’t rained in three months, where you got

wet? And he raised an eye and looked at me

like I was an idiot and he was going to die.

That is ok, old friend, both of us

are too old, now- all lives lived, all

fires consumed. Soon we will die, and there will

be no one to mourn us, and the better. The cat raised

his head, gave me a stare, as if telling me to

stop being melodramatic. So I came back to

my room, thinking about

what was, is and will be- there was nothing to

do; I was too old, and a cat wet not in the rain did

have a right to curl up silently in a corner of

the balcony, and die.