I found a stray cat.
I shouldn’t have. Or, more so, I shouldn’t have been able to. Where I live, nothing is supposed to find us. Yet despite that rule, that one fact of my world that was supposed to be true, I found a cat. It was small—not small enough to be a kitten or a newborn—but it definitely wasn’t a large or scary cat. It’s dark grey fur was well kept, and it didn’t look dirty. There was no collar, and no sign of where it had come from. It was laying down in the grass a ways away from our tree. It lay dormant, basking in the sunlight while snuggled up in the grass.
I hesitated for a moment. Only for a moment. Soon, curiosity got the better of me and I began approaching the cat. Not quickly—I started slowly stepping towards it, trying not to scare it away. Slowly closing the distance, I could feel a soft fear wash over me. It was just a small twinge at first, a tingling in my spine that made me hyper alert of the sounds I was hearing. I noticed how loud the blowing wind and the rustling of leaves were behind me. Every small crunch of grass felt louder than the last. The fear began to grow, and the pauses between my steps began to grow longer. Strange concerns began popping into my head. The fear of not fitting in. The fear of being out of place. It was then that I realized the fear wasn’t mine, but the stray cat’s.
I have an odd relationship with emotions. That’s how my father always described it, at least. He always told me that there was something wrong with the way I acted, and it wasn’t until I was much older that he finally understood how to explain it. According to him, emotions would “infect” me, like a sickness. If someone around me was happy, I would start to laugh. If someone near me got hurt, I’d cry more than they did. He told me that if someone nearby was feeling something, I’d contract the symptoms.
I guess I never realized that it was abnormal. After all, I’ve experienced it since I was born. It wasn’t something I was necessarily conscious of—at least, not all the time. It was like breathing—I wasn’t always aware of it, but if I focused on it I could feel it and try to control it. When people were really happy or really angry around me, I could feel the same feelings as naturally as I breathed.
As I got closer to the cat in front of me, its crippling fear grew around me. Despite it, I continued to step closer and closer. By the time I was next to it, the pressure of emotions almost had pushed me down to my knees. I slowly dropped myself to the ground, lifting a cautious and shaky hand towards the cat. With surgical precision, I slowly placed my hand on the back of the cat and softly ran my fingers through the fur.
Suddenly, the cat jumped up. I gasped, all the tension and dread that had built up causing me to fall back onto the grass. My heartbeat echoed through my ears, my eyes closed tight. After what felt like ages, my breath slowed and the sound of blood pumping had left my ears. What followed was a long, long silence. Even the wind stopped blowing. I kept my eyes closed, a new fear gripping me as I tensed for whatever was to come. Finally, I heard one soft, cautious meow.
I slowly opened my eyes to find two bright blue feline eyes staring back at me. I blinked. The cat blinked back. I slowly sat back up, turning my head to follow the gray cat crawling over into my lap. Sitting down with another meow, it once again stared at me with its big blue eyes. As the fear inside me melted away, I slowly placed my hand on its head and softly stroked its gray fur.
There was a small silence before the cat let out a soft purr, nuzzling my hand. Wrapping an arm carefully around it, the cat leaned against me with a gentle grace as it closed its eyes. The fear was gone, and what replaced it was a warm calm that wrapped around us. For that moment, it felt like the rays of the sun shielded us from the rest of the world as the wind sang notes of joy. Just then, every anxiety and stressful feeling melted away as the cat soothed me as much as I soothed it.
Too soon, I heard my sister calling my name. As quickly as it had come into my life, the cat hopped off my lap and disappeared in a bright blue flash. In one moment it was there, but in the next it was gone. It took me a second to even register what had happened. But all too quickly, my sister called for me once more and I was brought back into the house for lunch.
As of now, I’ve never seen the cat around again. I don’t know where it went, or if it plans to come back. Everytime I think about it there’s a pit that forms in my stomach, a worry that I’ll never see the cat again. Despite how boring life was, and how little seemed to happen every day, it was the first time that something happened so quickly that I couldn’t do anything. There was no chance for me to even speak, to learn its name or what its goal was.
Sometimes, all we’re left with are memories.