Sunday morning: the cat wakes me up in its usual way, by leaping on to my chest and placing a paw over my mouth to stop me crying out. I open my eyes, and the cat leans in.
“Miaow,” it says, meaning: let’s go.
“It’s Sunday,” I say.
“Miaow,” says the cat, meaning: you, me, downstairs, now.
“It’s 7.30,” I say. “Too early.”
But it’s not too early. We’ve got five people coming for lunch, our three sons included, and I need to check that the great lump of beef that I took out of the freezer has defrosted.
The cat follows me downstairs. I prod the frozen meat, and feed the cat. I clean up a small lake of piss left on the floor by the tortoise. I make coffee and sit down to stare into the middle distance.
“Miaow,” says the cat, winding its way round my ankles.
“I literally, I mean literally, just fed you,” I say.
Two hours later I’m removing the beef from its wet paper wrapping when my wife comes in. She is talking to the youngest one on the phone.
“By vegetarian option,” she says, “do you mean vegetables?”
“You can’t say it like that,” I say.
“Of course we have vegetables,” she says. “And roast beef.”
“We can get more vegetables,” I say.
“Are you sure that’s beef?” my wife says, leaning over my shoulder.
“It’s a bit paler than I remember,” I say.
“That looks like pork,” she says.
“We might need a vegetarian option,” I say.
I look up instructions for cooking beef, and then for cooking pork, and split the difference. Then I go out and buy more vegetables, and extra wine.
Everyone arrives. The kitchen grows loud and the cat, who hates a crowd, disappears. When the middle one goes searching for him an hour later, he eventually finds the cat in the garden, limping and in some distress.
We open the side door so the cat can come inside without having to encounter the lunch party. The cat limps to the sofa, crawls under it, and refuses to come out.
We leave the cat alone until everyone has gone, by which time he has taken himself upstairs to lie in the middle of the spare bed, stiff and unmoving.
“This cat is in a bad way,” my wife says.
“What do you mean?” I say, my voice accidentally cracking.
“Do you think he’s been hit by a car?” she says.
“There isn’t a mark on him,” I say. “He probably fell off something.”
I check on the cat at 10, and 12, and again at two. He’s asleep every time.
My alarm goes off at six, because I have work I was meant to finish on the weekend and didn’t. At nine I am typing away in my office shed when my wife comes in.
“I had a bad feeling about the cat,” she says.
“Really?” I say.
“And now he’s disappeared again,” she says. “I’ve searched the whole house, and I’m afraid he’s gone off somewhere to die.”
I think about this for a moment.
“I saw him this morning,” I say.
“When?” she says.
“At six, when I got up,” I say. “He came downstairs with me, and I fed him.”
“How was he?” my wife says.
“Um, sort of grumpy,” I say. “I left him lying on the floor.”
“Just lying there?” she says.
“Well, yeah,” I say. I stand up and search the house myself: behind curtains, under beds, in cupboards. I return to my shed and stare out at the garden, scanning the tops of the walls for movement. It starts to rain. I search the house again. Nothing. I check a neighbourhood website for fresh reports of dead cats. Nothing.
After an hour I begin to feel bereft and stupid. If I end up being the last person to see that cat alive, my version of events will come to be seen as unreliable. I’m already beginning to wonder if I dreamed the whole encounter. I find myself close to tears.
With nothing else to do, I go back to work. By the time I finish, it’s already dark outside. I return to the house to talk to my wife, finding her in her office upstairs.
“I’ve texted the neighbours to keep an eye out,” she says. “But to be honest I don’t hold out much hope.”
“He’s in the kitchen,” I say. “I passed him on my way up here.”
“What?” she says.
In the kitchen my wife stands, hand on hips, staring down at the cat as it rolls playfully on the floor.
“So you’re fine, is that it?” she says.
“Stupid cat,” I say.
