Cast No Shadow

You wake slowly like you always do, blinking sluggishly against the sudden light, stretching out the muscles that are cramped and sore from another night slept on a mattress on the floor.

This morning, though, when you roll over in preparation to haul yourself to your feet, something hits the floor with a muffled thud and an awful yowl and your eyes fly open.

It’s a cat. There’s a cat curled in on itself on the hard linoleum floor, a cat with ginger-brown fur that looks like it’d be soft to stroke, a cat with slitted blue eyes and a wary set to its mouth, a cat that’s probably small enough it’d fit in the pockets of your oversized hoodie.

You blink at it for a few moments in sleepy confusion. (It’s too early in the morning for furry creatures who may or may not have suddenly appeared while you were asleep. You can’t even be certain you aren’t still asleep, honestly.)

You want to ask how and who and why and a million other things that aren’t anything the cat can answer so you settle for something it can. You reach out a hand, cautious, to drag along the line of it’s spine. It’s tense under your touch but slowly relaxes as you repeat the motion, fascinated by the way the cat’s fur flattens under your fingers. It’s soft, so soft, softer than feather pillows and girls’ hair and your mum’s voice saying she’s gone, sweetheart, she ain’t ever coming back.

There’s a low humming noise that could be next door’s television or the central heating; it takes you a minute or so to realise it’s the cat, purring. It’s staring right at you with those unsettlingly blue eyes, unblinking, but there’s something softer about them as it butts back against your hand, leans into the gentle touch.

You smile at the cat and kid yourself it smiles back. You should probably stop touching it about now. The landlord is pretty clear on the no pets rule and, besides, there’s probably a poor little girl combing the streets right now, desperate to find her beloved cat and take it home.

You keep stroking it. There’s no tag around the cat’s neck and the landlord rarely bothers to drag himself up here unless you make too much noise. You don’t even have a TV, let alone a set of speakers or a CD player, just a crackly old radio you hardly use. The cat’ll be safe here.

You say that out loud, just so it knows, and this time you could swear it smiles.

#

You barely have enough food in the flat to feed yourself, let alone your furry friend. There’s enough milk in the fridge to half-fill a bowl, though, and you offer it to her, remembering something vague about cats and milk from a childhood that feels an eternity away.

(You’ve no idea if the cat’s a girl or a boy but she feels like a girl, sort of. She reminds you of an ex-girlfriend, one of the ones you actually liked before you managed to screw things up with her as royally as you always do.)

You shut the window while she laps at the bowl, pink tongue darting out to taste the cream. It’s the only way she could’ve got in considering the locked front door and lack of a cat flap, and you don’t want her sneaking back out while your back’s turned.

When the cat’s finished, you scoop her up off the ground in a way you hope doesn’t hurt her and coax her into the wide pocket of your hoodie, murmuring something soft about not hurting her and just needing to go out for a few minutes. She settles after a minute or so of you thumbing the back of her head, but her body’s still tense as you trudge out the door and shut it behind you. It only takes ‘til you get to the end of the road for her spine to straighten, ‘til you reach the shop on the corner for her to fully relax.

You can’t afford this, not really, but there’s a twenty pound note tucked in your back pocket, the origins of which you can’t really remember but aren’t about to question. You were just gonna blow it on cigarettes; it’d be much better spent on filling out the hollows in the cat’s body where your fingers are settled. (You have no idea how big she’s supposed to be but it can’t be healthy that she can fit comfortably in your hoodie with room to spare.)

When you return, you squeeze out the sachet of cat food into a bowl and present it to her with a dramatic flourish and a grin. She finishes off the lot in just under a minute, licking at the corners when there’s nothing left. You wonder, absently, when the last time she ate was, and something tight squeezes round your chest.

Lifting her into your arms, you carry her over to the couch and curl up gingerly in the corner, releasing her to fiddle with the radio. She doesn’t jump away when you let go, just curls up and snuggles into your lap like she never wants to leave. Your fingers wind back into her fur when you’ve settled on a station, volume turned down so the voices are just a quiet murmur. The sound bleeds into the purring coming from the weight settled against your chest, a low thrum of sound that resonates in your bones.

You hold her close and stroke her fur and hope that, maybe, she’s just as lonely as you, just as starved for touch and company and love. And, maybe, you might be able to hold onto her a little longer than the others.

Maybe.