The Cat at the End of the Line

The cat sat on the cardboard box that had been her apartment for three weeks, watching me with eyes the color of old whiskey. Sarah had left her behind—said she couldn't take a cat to her sister's place in Oregon. So now we were both stranded in this half-empty apartment, surrounded by boxes and the silence that comes after nine years together.

I sat on the floor with a bottle of cheap whiskey and watched cable news scroll through wars I couldn't fight and disasters I couldn't prevent. The cable guy had come yesterday, a kid with tattoos up his neck who looked at my divorce papers on the counter like they were radioactive. He'd asked if I wanted to upgrade to the premium package. More channels, more noise to fill up the spaces where Sarah used to be.

"You're like a fox," she'd told me once, early on. "All clever and quick and never staying still." She said it like it was a compliment, but later it became something else—something she couldn't trust. People who don't stay in one place don't stay in one relationship, she'd decided. And she was right, I suppose. About the leaving, anyway. The cleverness has always been debatable.

The cat jumped off her box and padded over to me, pressing her warm flank against my leg. She purred like a small engine, this steady, uncomplicated thing that wanted only food and touch and a square of sunlight. I ran my hand down her spine and felt her lean into me, asking for nothing else.

On the television, someone was talking about climate change and how the world was ending anyway, slowly and then all at once. I thought about Sarah in Oregon with her sister, starting over like I should be starting over. Instead I was here, thirty-five years old and drinking alone with a cat I didn't want and cable channels I didn't watch.

The cat looked up at me and meowed, insistently. Her water bowl was empty. I stood up and my legs ached from sitting on the floor. Her needs were so simple. Water. Food. A place to sleep. Why couldn't I be like that? Why did I need everything to mean something?

I filled her bowl and watched her drink, her pink tongue moving in quick, efficient laps. Outside, the city hummed and honked and carried on without me. Sarah was gone. The cat was here. The cable kept scrolling through disasters I couldn't fix. Some things you choose. Some things you don't. And some things, you just learn to live with.