The Guest Cat

by Takashi Hiraide

The days seemed to rush by faster and faster, and my work as an editor, supporting the writing efforts of others, began to make less and less sense.

observation is at its core an expression of love which doesn’t get caught up in sentiment.

“So what if you don’t have children. There’s nothing wrong with that. You don’t have to have kids if you don’t want to. Just be yourself.”

She seemed to find pleasantly comfortable the combination of this twilight nook with its human smell and the softness of the cushions.

That fall we took delivery of a package for the neighbors while they were away. Once she had determined that they were back, my wife took the package over to them. The front door was left open, so she rang the bell and stood in the entry waiting for someone to appear, but it was Chibi who came to greet her rather than the lady of the house. My wife was stunned. Chibi, who had been coming over to our house every morning and every night for who knows how long and had never let out a sound, now, for the first time, opened her mouth and began expressing herself at great length. The content of her speech — or so my wife reported to me with the utmost seriousness — was not about thanking us for taking care of her all of the time but rather, the usual social niceties, chatter about the weather and so on, and all the other insincere politenesses that neighbors often exchange.