One quiet Saturday afternoon, I was sitting alone in my room, watching videos on my computer, when a cat appeared at my window. It just sat there on the ledge, staring in at me through the glass, and something about the way it looked back made it obvious, it needed help.
After staring at it for about 10 minutes, not moving, barely breathing, it felt like I started to understand it. Not in words exactly, more like a feeling that settled into me, like I knew exactly what it was saying without it ever making a sound. It was alone. It was starving. It was worn out, the same way I felt most days without ever telling anyone.
Working up the courage, I got up and left my room to go after it, which was something I hadn't done in longer than I wanted to admit. My mom was in the hallway, and she looked genuinely surprised to see me coming out of there. Honestly, I'd never seen her that happy before, not in a long time, at least. She came over and hugged me tightly, and I understood, in pieces, why she was so happy: I hadn't felt motivated to do anything in a long time, and she'd clearly noticed, even when I thought I was hiding it well.
Coming out of her hug, I went straight outside, past the kitchen, to a kind of narrow alley beside the house where the cat had gone. It was already wasting away, curled up small against the wall like it was trying to disappear. I picked it up carefully and brought it inside, its body lighter than I expected.
Happy about the whole thing, I showed the cat to my mom right away. She looked confused for a second, her face showing a strange kind of nervous happiness, like she wasn't sure whether to be relieved or worried. But in the end she smiled and agreed to let us keep it. The cat turned out to have oddly similar tastes to mine, I didn't feel hungry anymore, hadn't in a while, but that cat loved my old favorite dishes, the ones I used to ask my mom for all the time. My mind always drifted back to making them, and somehow they always ended up made, for both of us. It ate a lot, more than any cat I'd ever seen. It honestly seemed more like a dog than a cat when it ate, but I loved it anyway. We decided to name him Tales.
One beautiful early morning, while my mom slept soundly in her room down the hall, my cat started meowing nonstop, sharp and urgent, waking me straight out of sleep. Luckily, even with him meowing that loud, my mom never stirred.
I got out of bed, still half asleep, and followed him through the dark house. He walked straight to the front door, nudged it open with his paw, and we went out together into the cool night air. I recognized the path almost immediately, a place with rocks where the ocean waves crashed against the shore in a violently harmonious way, the place I used to go most often with my dad while he was still alive, back when things felt different.
When we got there, we sat together on the edge of the highest rocks, looking out at the full moon hanging low over the water. And then, somehow, impossibly, the cat spoke. His voice was calm, familiar, almost like my own. He said:
"Stela, close your eyes. Think of where you always wanted to be."
After hearing that, I closed my eyes without any hesitation. I felt my body grow lighter and lighter, weightless almost, moving with a rhythm that matched the sound of the waves crashing again and again below us...