The next morning, I asked for more time.
Not because I was sure. I wasn’t. Shelters teach you not to trust hope too quickly.
But I started sitting with her every day after my shift. I didn’t force her out. I didn’t reach in and grab her. I just sat on the floor beside her kennel and talked.
Mostly nonsense. Original work by Cat in My Life.
What traffic had been like. What I was making for dinner. How my apartment felt too quiet since my divorce. How sometimes I left the television on just to hear another voice in the room.
On the third day, she licked a little food off the spoon.
On the fifth, she drank water while I was still sitting there.
On the seventh, she stepped out of the back corner and came to the front of the kennel when she heard my shoes.
That was the first time I cried over her.
Not because she was fixed.
Because she wasn’t.
She was just trying.
A week later, a woman came in just before closing. Maybe late sixties. Maybe early seventies. No makeup, sensible shoes, soft denim jacket. The kind of person who didn’t waste words.
She passed the younger cats. Passed the playful ones reaching through the bars. Then she stopped in front of the gray tabby.
The cat was sitting still, watching her.
The woman looked at me and asked, “What happened to this one?”
I told her the truth.
Not the short version people use when they want to move things along. The real version.
That she’d come in with her sibling. That the sibling died. That she cried for days. That she was only now starting to eat, starting to trust, starting to come back to herself.
The woman stood there for a long moment.
Then she said, “I buried my husband in January.”
I didn’t say anything.
