What the Cat Knows

The surveillance photos lay scattered across Maya's dining table like confetti at a funeral. Another Tuesday, another corporate target whose life she'd dissect into actionable intelligence. She was good at her work—being a spy had always come naturally, even before the private intelligence firms started calling. It was the same skill that had kept her marriage intact for seven years: knowing when to speak, when to listen, and most importantly, what not to see.

Barnaby, her orange tabby, jumped onto the table and sat directly on a photo of the pharmaceutical CEO she'd been tracking for three weeks. He looked at her with those impenetrable yellow eyes, as if asking why she insisted on collecting other people's moments when she could barely inhabit her own.

"You know something," she whispered, scratching behind his ears. "You always know."

Outside, lightning fractured the sky, illuminating the apartment in sudden, stark relief. For a split second, she saw everything clearly: the half-empty wine glass from dinner alone, the unread text message from David that had been glowing on her phone for two hours, the way she'd learned to spy on everyone else to avoid looking at herself.

The cat purred, his warmth seeping into her wrist, grounding her. She'd adopted him after David had moved out—his attempt to "find himself" in Santa Fe. That was six months ago. They still spoke every Sunday, careful conversations that danced around the elephant in the room: that they'd become strangers who happened to share a mortgage and history.

Another flash of lightning, closer this time. The thunder followed immediately, shaking the windows. Maya's phone lit up with a notification: the monitoring software she'd installed on David's phone during a paranoid moment three years ago. He was at a restaurant. With someone.

Her fingers hovered over the screen. She could track his location, pull security footage, piece together who he was with and whether their hands touched across the table. She was a spy, after all. It's what she did.

Barnaby stood, stretched, and knocked the phone onto the floor with deliberate precision. Then he walked to the window and meowed at his own reflection—cocky, unashamed, entirely himself.

Maya laughed, the sound rusty in her throat. The cat was right. Some things weren't meant to be seen, only felt. She left the phone on the floor, gathered the surveillance photos, and dropped them in the shredder. The lightning flashed again, but this time she didn't look away.