What the Cat Knew

Mara sat on the hotel balcony, watching her husband by the pool. He was doing laps again, back and forth, back and forth, mechanical as clockwork. Three years ago, he would have waved, would have called up to her to come down, would have been plotting which excursion they'd take after his swim. Now he just moved through the water, another zombie in the apocalypse of their marriage.

She looked down at the stray cat rubbing against her ankle — a mottled calico with half an ear missing, survivor of something fierce. The cat had appeared on their first morning here, sensing perhaps the decay between them, the way vultures circle before the end. Mara had been feeding it scraps from room service, building a fragile intimacy with a creature who asked nothing of her.

"You see it too, don't you?" she whispered to the cat. "You see what's dead."

Below, her husband pulled himself from the water. He didn't look up. He just retrieved his towel and his phone, sat in a lounge chair, and began scrolling, bathed in the merciless Mexican sun. He used to read poetry by pools. He used to plan surprises. Now he moved through their shared life with the hollow efficiency of someone who had forgotten why they'd started the journey.

The cat jumped onto her lap, purred vibrating against her thighs, and she realized she hadn't been touched with intention in eight months. Not a hand on her back in sleep, not a fingers-through-her-hair moment, not the kind of touch that says: I see you. I choose you. Still here.

She watched her husband by the pool, watched the way his shoulders slumped forward, the phone lighting his face in blue pulses. Had he been a zombie the whole time? Had she simply missed it in the frantic early romance, the wedding planning, the race toward a future they'd never actually discussed? Or had something specific hollowed him out — the job he hated, the father who died, the disappointment of expectations that life hands you like medical bills?

The cat bit her finger, just enough to say: pay attention.

Mara stood up, cat still in her arms, and walked to the door. She could go down there, sit beside him, force the conversation that might kill them completely or maybe, somehow, bring something back to life. Or she could pack her bag, catch an earlier flight, and finally admit that not all zombies can be saved.

The cat purred. The sun burned. Below, by the pool, her husband continued to scroll, endlessly, endlessly, as the water lapped against the tiles and the day went on without them.