Word reaches me by email at my office this afternoon: Willow the blind cat died this morning in Normandy.
I can’t remember a thing about that instant only hours ago, which distinguishes it from the many other instants before, after and all around. Everything was as if stopped.
The cat touched me unthinkably.
She was not dissuaded from living, not by blindness, illness, or fragility. She just went on in the world as she experienced it. I could have watched her all day. She just went on and on.
What else is there to do?
What was I watching? A thin, sick cat losing her fur, blind, kidneys failing, probably with a constant headache, as Paul her owner said?
I think I was watching me.