At dusk, the cat, taking its final breath as the last sun ray vanished, passed away.

That its stiff and cold body made me suffer was the only excuse I was planning to give to my boyfriend for my desperate emptiness left by the cat. I had been impatient to tell him, but I was too anxious to do so. He, however, would never open his door, never answer my phone calls, never reply to my emails, never come to my house, and never pop up in my dreams, again.
 

Constructing an excuse for getting rid of the cat’s dead body was an essential everyday task, because I had to create a new lie that would bring him back, but finally no one wanted to listen to them.

I told my therapist about the worsening feeling of loneliness “The vacuum cleaner can’t get rid of all the cat fur filling every corner, so while I sleep, the fur drifts into my nose, gets sucked by my trachea, choking my lungs.” The therapist, turning his eye back from a construction site, gazed at me, replying, “perhaps you should get another cat. Only by having another cat will you get over the allergy caused by the previous one.” He knocked at the table with the nib of his pen, making noises resembling a woodpecker pecking a tree. He continued, “due to all the uncontrolled urban development, people have been cemented in their logic, leaving the nature further and further away. That emptiness can only be filled by the hairy wild creatures.” On his wooden table, his nib dug a hole that kept extending.

The hole left by the dead cat was more like the incubation of my new cat, Puma. Soft, the slumbering little cat lied on the floor not far away. Its stomach, in regular fluctuations, seemed like a little volcano going to explode.

Puma was so tiny that it could hardly finish a stable walk.

​

“I’ll have this one,” I stated.

​

“Your visit probably defines the meaning of its birth,” said the cat seller who was leaning on the wall.

​

I lifted my head and glanced at him, realising his apathetic, almost brutal, heart which revealed no attempt at pretence. The reaction made me doubt his intentions.  Somehow, Puma,like holding water, has already been put in my arms. If I had not grabbed it tight on time, it would have seeped through my fingers to someone else. Although the room was cramped with numerous active cats which were running and fighting around, I knew immediately that if these young fluffy balls scarcely equipped with any surviving skills have not been taken out on time, they would probably die right here, or being discarded into the ditch behind the house.

 

Knowing my decision, the cat seller still looked uneasy. He elevated his sight to the gloomy sky, ran into another room and came back with a nylon bag. He threw Puma from my arms into the bag and said, “never think cat-selling is an easy art, it is a hard job and experiment when it comes to reproducing cats. No one knows what they need, and sometimes, you put the ‘best-fitted’ and the ‘most adapted’ cat into the adopter’s hands, but their eyes are still gazing at those they cannot have, and that’s why there is an increasing number of cat-abandonings.” I thought these words were actually targeted at me, urging me to grab that nylon bag, and run away from that sea-front house like an escapee.

 

Not until I sat on the ship, which had departed the harbour, reaching the middle of the sea, did I realize. Running to the door, he yelled, "Nobody knows, managing cats’ reproduction is just to fill the ubiquitous gap. People misjudge breeders – the same way they misjudge gamblers and speculators, thinking that money is their only goal of living...” Finally I started understanding – that unquenchable expression of desire, perhaps out of regret, perhaps for the sake of gaining assurance. I unzipped the nylon bag and picked into it. The cat turned its head, looking at me through the gap. That fierce, sharp gaze contrasted drastically with its weak body. As I zipped it again, I knew, the cat sellers had been left in that desolate island. And I was not the only sinner.

 

At that time, Puma hadn't been named yet. I took it out from the bag, putting it on the wooden floor. And it instinctively crawled to the containers with food and water, enjoying, and going back to a dark corner afterwards. And, lying there, it slept. Squatting in the house, looking at it, I felt as if it was not like a cub, but a plant waiting germination, like a bean.

​

I thought I had withered, merely waiting for time to decompose my life, yet cats are restless at night. In my dream I always heard it jumping, running, or tiptoeing along the wall searching for something.  Even if it just licked and bit its own fur it brought me an illusion. The wounds that blossomed in every corner of the house started to slow down their tearing paces, as if they were being paralyzed. Soon, I fell asleep again. Long after, I realized, it must have been the endless drowsiness, which enabled me to flee from the dilemma of life and death, as well as the hardship between them. Waking up in the morning, I always saw the long shadow of the cat’s body stretched from the wall to the floor. That comforting curve helped me forget about the dense windows, vehicles’ noise and pedestrians’ swearing. Thanks to that, I was able to work concentrated or simply emptying myself on my palms and their wild, chaotic prints.

 

When the doorbell rang, I softly walked to the door, for the sake of diminishing myself from the visitor. I put my face near the spyhole, yet keeping a safe distance from the door. What I saw was a mentally exhausted man. He did not seem to be a postman, nor a food courier. Turning around I noticed the cat had already vigilantly arched itself and stared at the door. “I don’t know him,” I explained to the cat. In a wink, he flurriedly and carefully ran back to the room. Then, he hid himself under a chair. The bell urged me again. I tried to focus on the hole and the man’s impatient face, and I recalled my memory of my past therapist. Suddenly it dawned to me that the man next to my door was exactly the doctor. I had forgotten him, like I have forgotten the self who looked for cure, long time ago.

 

“What happened to you?” His head, meanwhile, probed around the house like searching for something suspicious and then started to wander in my home.

 

I felt like, I shall not reject any unexpected visitor, like we always obediently put off our clothes when doctors request us to, for the purpose of body-checks. The man did not take off his shoes while stepping into my house. I thought silence would be the best way to complain about him bringing in dirt to my apartment, but he did not realise my concern. Instead of feeling regret, he looked into my face with doubts and said, “I smell cats.” So I used my jaw to point in the direction of the chair, “Is this what you are suggesting?” He then crouched down and observed for a while.

 

“It’s too vigorous,” the man concluded finally.

I nodded my head as I could not disagree with him, “He’s truly very healthy,” adding I would not be able to touch any thin and weak animal ever again if the cat dies.

​

“After all, oversized animals can be too dangerous.” He interrupted and pointed out that according to the cat’s bones and fur, it was in the midst of its growing stage. In the near future, it was going to be larger and larger. He warned me, “It is not a human, but a beast.”
 
After he stepped out of the house, the invader’s glare and attitude were still lingering on. Luckily, the cat finally sneaked out of the dark corner carefully and slowly. It was that afternoon he started talking to me. Of course, he did not utter any human word and just stuck to what cats do. But he kept delivering messages on and off, in a way that I could understand.
 
I called him Puma --- a name that he let me know.
 
“A therapist needs a patient to establish his status.” He told me while straightening his right leg, licking his fur with might and main. Then, he looked up at me with his saucer eyes, directly and deeply. “The problem is, are you going to cling to the patient identity?” he asked.
 
That night, it was the first time he no longer wandered in the living room, but climbed up to my bed lying alongside me. He was just long enough to reach my thigh. Since then, it became his habit, repeating every night. His growth rate was out of my expectation. At night, every creature takes off their masks in the daytime and reveals their real selves. We talked about anything under the sun and I sometimes even forgot the boundary between us, having an illusion that we were developing into an intimate couple. But I was not afraid. After all, he was just a cat.
 
He grew rapidly every night with a weird posture. Looking at his undefended face after sleeping on my belly, I imagined he was actually my child, especially when he was dreaming and twitching. I felt like he could fill my emptiness easier than any food. Soon he was long enough to reach my heart and place his thin and cool ears on my chest. Then I could not help bursting into tears. In a few days, he was already as tall as me. It was the coldest day of the year. He held me in his arms and stopped my freezing body from trembling. He pressed my back with his soft palms and licked away the tears on my face.

​

“When the sun rises, help me to manicure my nails,”  the sound of grunt was deeply in his body, liked the running spring from the hill. I knew he tries to avoid hurting me with his sharp claws. I could not help but put my face inside his thickened hair where I did not sense any smell of a cat. From that I knew—he is a neat freak.

“Now, I am finally weaker than you,” I looked straight at him and could not conceal my fear. “Would you eat me when I fall asleep?”

He stared at me with his shining eyes. They were suddenly full of sadness, ‘Have you ever thought of making a cat feast when I was still young?’

“I didn’t mean that.” I looked down, and my sight flitted his mouth. Suddenly, another concern came to my mind. At that time, I felt like Puma could share my rotting emotions. “Then, do you want to raise me as your pet?”

“Only humans can think that way.” He shook his head quickly, looked like he is shaking off something that bothered him.

I relaxed myself and lied on Puma’s back. Between the wake and dream, he became not only my lover, my mother, my friends (uncontacted for many years), but also the people who had hurt me (still unforgotten). However, when I opened my eyes, I saw Puma was stretching his body and shaking his stiff limbs. He also seemed getting a little taller.  I hereby knew he is not like them. Thanks to that, we could establish a new relationship.

The night had not gone yet, but we were not sleepy. Therefore, we stood beside each other in front of the window and saw the streetlight turning off one by one. The colour of the sky was fading, and the street was awaking.

“After I grow up, this place will no longer accept me. If the neighbours discover me in the window, they will tell the police.” He wagged its tail showing his happiness or his despondence. “I will escape from here before my body becomes larger than the door.”

“Where do you want to go?” I asked him.

“To a place where nobody hates and hunts enormous animals.” He stared at me quietly.

​

“Does this kind of place really exist?” I doubted.

​

“The fact is, I have to get there.” He wiped off the dirt in the corner of the eye with his forepaw and asked me, “do you want to stay here or come with me?”

​

I couldn’t help but look around the stuff scattered in the house. Books, clothes, accessories, cups, umbrellas, handbags, leather shoes… The cat saw it all. “No matter where it is, you don’t own anything except yourself.”

​

We looked into each other’s eyes for a long time until I leaned forward, and finally took off the tight collar on his neck.

​

Arriving at the leather shop, the craftsman had just had his lunch. He took a glance at the collar in my hand. He must have been thinking it was used by someone whose waist has rapidly been expanding.

​

I told him that I wanted to have a longer collar attached with a rope and a safe buckle to tie another creature. The craftsman looked at me full of sentiments, and then gazed at the collar, still keeping his virtue of silence.

​

My gaze rested outside the shop, crowded with people under flowing sunshine. Soon a thick night appeared in my eye. Surrounded by silence, I saw myself riding on Puma’s back. The collar on his neck holding me in place. I didn’t know the direction we were heading for. I could only trust the cat’s instinct. Yet, I was sure that Puma’s body was expanding, wider and broader. He was running with all his might, following his instinct, as if immersing himself into hard-earned freedom. I buried my face in the dark-grey fur resembling a forest. It was another deep night.