Love Saves the Day

I realize now that I’ve heard about this man. The last time Anise visited us was seven months ago, and Sarah told her then that Laura was getting married to someone named Josh. Anise seemed surprised Laura was getting married at all, and Sarah said she was surprised at first, too, but that Josh was a Good Man. Anise said Laura’s marrying a Good Man was pretty miraculous, all things considered. Then they started talking about the man Sarah used to be married to, and I fell asleep eventually when I realized nobody was saying Prudence.

Josh has made the kitchen empty, too, and everything that used to live there is in a box or a garbage bag. It doesn’t look like our kitchen anymore, and the only way you could tell a human and a cat ever used it is because my bag of dry food is still sitting on the counter. When Laura comes out to wipe down the counters with a spritzy bottle and paper towels, she looks at the food and then looks around the apartment, as if she’s trying to see where I am. But then she just pushes the food bag to one side and keeps cleaning.

I’ve never seen Laura look sad before, but today she seems sad. Her eyes fill up with water again as she moves into the living room, although she quickly blinks the water away. And the sadness is there in the way she talks, too. Usually Laura forms her opinions quickly and sticks to them, and you can tell, when she and Sarah disagree about something, how impatient she gets when Sarah hesitates and says, Well, maybe you’re right … I don’t know … And even though I always sympathize with Sarah, because she’s my Most Important Person, privately I agree with Laura that Sarah just needs to make up her mind. That’s part of the reason why Sarah and I get along so well, because I have strong opinions even when she doesn’t. Sarah always, for example, asks what I think about what she’s wearing before she goes out. If I like it, I stare at her with my eyes very big and put all my wisdom and approval into them. And if I don’t like it, I close my eyes slightly and turn my head off to the side, like maybe I’m just sleepy, but Sarah knows what that means. And she’ll say, You’re right, this skirt needs a different jacket, and change into something better before she leaves.

But when Laura tells Josh she guesses they should get started on the big closets in the living room, she almost sounds confused. Instead of saying, We should get started on the big closets in the living room, she asks, I guess we should get started on the big closets in the living room? Even saying I guess instead of just we should is more uncertainty than Laura usually shows.

I’m not sure what’s so confusing to her about this room. Everything in here seems ordinary to me. Maybe it looks and smells a little dustier than usual, with Sarah not having been here to clean for almost a week. My litterbox smells bad all the way from the bathroom and that’s embarrassing, especially when there’s a stranger here who doesn’t know how tidy I usually am.

But I don’t think it’s dust or the litterbox that’s making Laura hesitate. Then it comes to me: Laura feels the way I do. She didn’t expect Sarah to leave any more than I did, and now she’s confused and sad because she has to decide what to do with Sarah’s and my stuff. I’ve been waiting for her to say something about where Sarah went and why, but she’s been left behind by Sarah just like I have.

Realizing that even Laura didn’t know Sarah was leaving makes me feel for the first time that I really might never see Sarah again. It feels like my stomach is trying to squeeze all the way through the top of my throat. It feels worse than when humans used to shout at me on the streets, or the day I lost my littermates in that thunderstorm.

Now I want desperately to come out, to tell Laura that maybe Sarah will come back if only we don’t move all her things that smell familiar and make her recognize this as her home. But Laura hasn’t called to me the way Sarah would, or tried to introduce me to the strange human in the way it’s supposed to be done. Too much is unusual today already, and the thought of coming out from under-the-couch the wrong way, without anybody even saying, Prudence, come here and meet so-and-so, the way Sarah always does, makes my stomach squeeze even harder.