What Survives

The cat hasn't eaten since Maya died. Three weeks, and the animal sits on Maya's side of the bed, yellow eyes following me with something that looks uncomfortably like judgment. I've tried every expensive pâté, every shredded chicken breast, every trick Google suggests. Nothing.

On the kitchen counter, the goldfish — Cartlidge, Maya named it, because she was weird like that — swims in its murky bowl, oblivious. It's been fed accidentally three times. It thrives on neglect, on the algae coating the glass, on whatever grim resilience small things develop when no one is watching. I considered letting it go, tipping it into the pond behind the apartment complex where children throw bread crumbs and geese fight over scraps. But Maya bought it the week before the car accident. She'd come home with the plastic bag swinging from her fingers, grinning like she'd discovered something profound. 'His name is Cartlidge,' she'd said, 'because he's just bone and persistence.'

I should throw out the pyramid of unpaid bills on the dining table. Medical expenses, the lease Maya signed for a studio space she'd never use, the credit card debt from her last burst of optimism. I sit at the table and stare at the stack until the paper blurs. The cat — I still call it 'the cat' because naming it feels like accepting Maya's gone — jumps onto the table, knocking over a water glass. It doesn't look at me. It looks at the empty chair where Maya used to sketch.

Tonight I find the cat staring at the goldfish bowl. Its tail twitches. I wait for it to strike, to do what cats do, to remind me that nature is cruel and survival is violent. Instead, it presses its forehead against the glass, watching Cartlidge drift through his green-tinged world. The fish rises to the surface, mouth opening and closing in silent bubbles.

The cat turns to me, and for the first time in weeks, it makes a sound — a raw, broken thing that sounds almost like grief. I sink to the floor and the cat climbs into my lap, heavy and warm and real. Its purr rattles against my chest. We sit there together, two survivors watching a fish swim in circles, and somewhere in the apartment, I can almost hear Maya laughing about how we're all just waiting for someone to remember to feed us.