To Be A Cat

by Matt Haig

Cats are just cute little pets who sleep next to radiators all day long. To which I would say – That’s just what they want you to think.

Purring. (Trust me, that is magic.)

‘Listen, Barns, I’m there for you, OK? I know you might get in an incy-wincy bit of trouble tonight, but just think, this is only a tiny, tiny moment in time. Think of the stars. Think of our star. The sun. It is billions of years old. And it’s going to keep shining whatever happens. Look, in a year’s time this will be nothing. In ten years’ time, when you’ve got a long beard, you won’t even remember it.’

Like the world told the same lie over and over. The lie that things didn’t change. That things stayed as still as the empty morning air. And it was easy to keep the lie going because most of the time things really didn’t change. Each Monday was like the last, give or take a few details. You saw the same faces every day, ate similar food week by week, did a lot of the same stuff. But the stillness of things made it worse when changes happened. Like when a shark pops out of an ocean to gobble a fisherman. Or like when his dad and his mum told him, ‘We’re not going to live together any more.’ Or when, one day, his dad wasn’t there to tell him anything at all. An old woman

out you have to actually like yourself to become yourself …’

a perfectly average but totally unique boy,

Every day that you wake up as yourself and see that genius in the mirror is another reason to stay happy.