The Cat Always Knows

Barnaby, their seventeen-year-old tabby, had been staring at the bedroom door for three hours. Eleanor watched him from the bed, his yellow eyes unblinking, tail twitching with some ancient feline prescience.

"What do you know that I don't?" she whispered, reaching to stroke his papery-soft ears.

Her phone buzzed on the nightstand—Richard's iphone, which he'd left in his haste this morning. A notification slid across the screen: *Message from Sarah: Can't wait for tonight.*

Eleanor's heart performed a slow, sickening somersault. She knew Sarah. Richard's new colleague, thirty-four to Eleanor's fifty-two, sharp-witted and devastatingly alive. Eleanor had been pleased when Richard mentioned her. Proud, even—that her husband still attracted such interest, that he hadn't yet settled into the comfortable invisibility of middle age.

Now she stared at his phone, the sleek black rectangle that contained the evidence of her obsolescence. She'd never been the jealous type. Twenty-eight years of marriage had taught her that trust, like muscle, required exercise to remain strong. But this—this was different.

Barnaby meowed, a sound like tearing paper, and padded to the closed door. He pressed his paw against it as if testing its integrity.

"Go ahead then," Eleanor said. "Spy on him."

She didn't mean it, but the old cat seemed to understand. When Richard returned that evening, flushed and apologetic—"Sorry, love, emergency at the office"—Barnaby wound himself around his legs, purring extravagantly, exposing his belly in a display of calculated vulnerability. Richard laughed, scooping him up.

"Someone missed me," he said, scratching the cat's chin. But his eyes darted toward Eleanor, then away.

Later, while Richard showered, Eleanor found herself holding his phone again. Sarah's message still glowed on the lock screen. But there were others, older: *Thank you for listening*, *You're the only one who understands*, *I don't know how to tell her*.

Her fingers trembled. She unlocked it—she knew his password, had always known it—and opened the thread. The last message, sent this morning: *I can't do this to Eleanor. We have to stop.*

Sarah's reply: *I understand. You're right.*

The shower stopped. Eleanor placed the phone back on the nightstand, exactly as it had been.

When Richard emerged, towel-drying his hair, Eleanor was sitting in the armchair, Barnaby asleep in her lap. She'd never loved the stubborn old creature more.

"Everything okay at work?" she asked, and her voice sounded surprisingly steady.

Richard hesitated. Then, something like relief washed over his face. "Actually," he said, sitting beside her, "no. But I think I need to tell you about it."

Barnaby opened one yellow eye, satisfied, and went back to sleep.