What Outlasts Us

The orange cat sat on the windowsill, watching me with the patient judgment of a creature who had been abandoned before. David's cat, technically. David who left three months ago with his clothes and his record collection and his chaotic warmth, leaving behind this ball of fur that looked at me like I was the disappointment.

I fed the goldfish in the bowl on the counter. It had been five years since I won it at that carnival — the night David and I met. He'd helped me carry the plastic bag home through the rain, both of us drunk on possibility and cheap beer. The fish had outlasted everything we built that night: the apartment we leased, the promises we whispered, the marriage we thought would survive anything.

"You're still here," I told the fish. It swam in its endless circles, oblivious to how tragic it was that a creature with a three-second memory had become the most constant thing in my life.

The orange cat meowed, demanding breakfast. Its fur was the color of the sunset David used to point to from our balcony, the one he claimed meant everything would be okay. Now I just saw it as the color of things ending.

My therapist said I should find meaning in small acts of care. So I fed them both, these two survivors of my failed marriage. The cat who had chosen to stay with me, despite everything. The fish who simply refused to die, as if stubbornness alone could keep a heart beating.

I realized then that I wasn't caring for them because they were David's leftovers. I was caring for them because they were still here, swimming and purring and demanding to be fed in a world where most things just left.

The orange cat jumped onto my lap, finally. It purred against my chest like a small engine restarting something inside me. "Okay," I whispered. "We're all still here."