Chapter 04. Two Bowls

After the green carrier and the bleached light, my small room on the first floor was mine again. A little of the clinic still clung to my paws, that prickly smell that was not mine, but the blanket smelled stronger by now — of dust, of cloth, and of the quiet warmth that stays in a place where somebody has decided to let you live. The door was shut, the water changed, the dry food always crunched the same. The day ran even. At first I simply waited for footsteps. Then I began to tell which board gave warning of them earliest. And then even the silence between the footsteps stopped being a stranger’s.

But there was always something else beyond the door. Not a person.

Now and then a smell that was not mine would creep right up to the gap — warm, woolly, a little dry, with a thin angry note running through it. It would hold there a short while and go away. I would lift my head, sniff the air, come closer, almost touch my nose to the floor. On the other side there was sniffing too. A door lay between us, and through it we managed to say more to one another than you would think. Here the house gives you the gap first. It does not show the whole of itself straight away.

At night the people came in quickly, each with business of their own. Sometimes the man, sometimes the woman, sometimes the boy. The white thing in the corner mattered to them for some reason, though to me it seemed merely a part of my temporary kingdom. They would open the door just wide enough to get through, watch where I was looking and how I held my paws, and go out again just as quickly. Each time I managed to catch a little of the big house: the edge of the staircase, the warm air of the corridor, somebody’s shadow further along the floor. And that smell as well. It lived out there, past the bounds of the room, and it came no closer than it thought fit.

On the third day everything shifted.

The door opened wider than usual. First the woman came in with a bowl in her hands. Behind her, the man. In his arms lay a grey cat. Not large, sleek, gathered all together into one tight knot of attention. Ears flat. Eyes yellow-green and wary. The tail living a troubled life of its own. She looked at me as though I had grown up in the room without asking, and was now stopping the air from moving the way it used to.

I stayed on the blanket and only stretched my neck out. I wanted to come nearer. But the hiss got there first.

It was quiet, short, with no strength wasted on it. It lay down between us like a drawn line. I froze. So: no closer for now. The man held her firmly but calmly, without pressing her too hard. The woman put a bowl on the floor. Then another. The smell went through the room at once — thick, meaty, warm, of a kind that made even my caution back off against the wall for a moment.

‘Lira. Gently. Say hello,’ said the man. ‘Behave, you two,’ the woman answered.

Lira. So the grey one is called Lira. The sound settled on her evenly, with no gap left over. I remembered it. The people had said their piece and gone still. Nobody flew at anybody — that is a treaty already.

The grey one was set down on the floor. She did not rush at me. The thunderstorm stayed behind in the man’s arms. What stood before me now was a cat with no intention of giving up a single spare inch to me for free. She held herself a little side-on, so that the bowl was within reach and she could be at the door in a second. Her paws stood firm. Her back stayed tight. Even when she was looking at the food, one ear stayed behind with me.

I purred, quietly. More for the look of the thing than to persuade anybody.

She answered with a look. Then with another short ‘sshh’, as if to remind me: I was here first, don’t forget it. Understood. I know how to respect another cat’s whiskers.

The woman moved the bowls so that a distance was left between us. Not a large one, but not a small one either. Lira twitched her tail but did not leave her place. So this much was allowed for now. The people wanted us to learn one more thing about each other besides the hissing.

I went up to my bowl first. The smell made my head swim. The warm pieces lay in a little heap, gleaming in the light, and for a second the whole world narrowed down to food. But I kept one eye sideways all the same. The cat stood where she was a second longer, then two. Then she stepped towards her own bowl. Carefully. Without taking her ears off me.

And so we began to eat.

It was a strange and important dinner. There was hardly any crunching — only soft, quick eating, and rare pauses when each of us checked that the other was still where it had been. At first I bolted my food, then reined myself in. She ate faster than I did — briskly, as though she wanted to get her part over with and come out of this new closeness whole. Now and then a quiet sound would roll out of her throat and lie down between us along the old line: don’t forget the distance. I did not forget it.

You can lie down side by side. You can chase one another. You can fight. Or you can simply eat out of two bowls in one room, each of us out of our own. And we ate.

She finished first. Lifted her head. Looked at me as though she still did not much care for me but no longer took me for a disaster. It was a good look. Not a warm one. Households are built out of exactly that. Then she licked her lips, swung her tail, and went to the door. She left like the mistress of the place — and took both the smell and the hissing away with her.

The man bent down after her. The woman picked up the bowls.

‘Well, they didn’t eat each other. That’s a start.’

I finished mine more slowly than I had begun. A grey, woolly trace still held in the room. I sniffed the air and felt it: this was no longer simply somebody beyond the door. The smell had grown eyes, ears, a tail and a temper. Not one of ours, of course. That was still a long way off. But not altogether a stranger any more.

When the door closed again I went back to the blanket and lay down with my paws stretched out. The quiet in the room had changed. Before, somebody had simply lived beyond the door. Now she walked about out there — grey, quick, and every step of hers saying: this place is taken. We had not made friends yet. We had not even properly been introduced. But a faint meaty trace of the two bowls still lay on the floor, and her smell still hung in the air. I shut my eyes and lay listening to them.