The first time I saw you was in bright early morning light, crossing a wide clearing in the woods just beyond the yard. A small tuxedo cat, black body, lifting your little white feet up high to clear the dense grass, moving in a brisk graceful prance toward the shadows of the woods. Open space was not safe.
Seeing you outside was disconcerting. You looked exactly like our Diana. I searched to find her curled on my bed-perhaps dreaming of the safety of the woods.
Then my neighbors told that they had seen you in their garage, and were worried that you might eat a mouse that had ingested the rodent poison they’d put out in their basement.
I plotted to lure and capture you. I put out food at night. It was gone in the morning.
The next night, I saw you in the dark through a window. Ghostly. Poised on our patio wall—only the white of your face, chest and legs and the light reflected in your eyes visible. I could see your mouth opening and closing to form silent meows. You looked directly at me. But when I opened the back door to feed you, you scurried into the night.
The next morning I brought food again. After I had come back indoors, you came from the woods, bouncing jauntily across the lawn to your bowl. As you ate, you watched me watching you. I took a photo. The vet had asked for a photo to post in their office to identify you in case you belonged to someone who was looking for you.
The next day, you sat at your bowl with your back to me. You were telling me you trusted me.
The first time you spoke clearly to me was when I was weeding on the side patio. Your insistent and incessant meowmeowmeow came from within the dense growth of peony leaves. I thought you might be trapped in the well of a basement window behind the foliage. As I approached you, I saw you were hiding, not trapped. I didn’t come too near, but went back to my weeding several feet away. Then you approached me, almost rubbing against my booted ankles. But I had just listened to a radio program about rabies, warning us not to touch strange animals. I wanted to touch you, but didn’t. Though you were inviting me to.
The next evening, we sat with friends on the side patio having wine and cheese. You began again your incessant meowing, and my friend hopped up from the table, quickly pooh-poohing the rabies idea. She said give me some of that cheese, and she held it out low and called to you. Before long you were wrapping yourself around our legs, purring, and the four of us were petting you.
By the next day, you were visiting me on the screen porch, where I had left the door open, and had brought food and a litter box. You stayed there, curled peacefully on the cushion of a rocking chair. I closed the porch door. You were safe. By the next day, a friend, who was needing a cat, came and met you. And by the next day you had gone with her to your new home.
As autumn unfolds, I think back to the day that I told my neighbor that I had some time to capture you before it turned really cold. I am grateful that is not something I have to think about.
Looking out at the chill rain, and at the gold leaves being rustled by the wind, I smile to think of you sleeping curled in your new home. Not dreaming of the wet woods in whose darkness you—and who else perhaps? Both prey and predator—sought shelter, concealment. Your dreams now I imagine are of stretching in the warmth of a wood stove, curling up in a welcoming lap.
When I look out into the impending cold and darkness, though, I half expect to see you. Diana approaches the mullioned glass kitchen door, the place where she had seen you so many times before you left. I see her reflection approach her like an apparition from the other side, from the place where your food and water dishes still sit. Diana and the reflected image stare for a while face to face. She, most likely, doesn’t even see you, but I see you there, ghostly. And imagine that she is facing you without fear or enmity. Just curiosity, if anything at all, and puzzlement at your lack of substance.
Who might you be to her? And to me, for that matter? Are you what we are missing? The lost self that hides in the dark forest of the heart? Seeking protection, concealment, while issuing forth meows that tell a story of longing. A story of needing to belong. Meow meow meow. I am here I am here I am here.