the scratches on the window sill
published: 2014-07-20I look at a picture of the cat we had. She was of unusual coloring, a pale orange with white stripes. Her eyes were a thin green. On the picture, they look at me in vulnerable anger.
She came to us through friends and had been neglected. It took a while for her to show up from beneath my couch. And an even longer while for her to climb up onto my son’s lap.
He adored her for that, for her trust in him.
She was a scared cat.
“Scaredy cat”, girls at school would say.
I wasn’t the type of child who liked to climb trees or sleep over at friends’ houses. I preferred staying inside. I often slept during the day.
I locked my cat out on the balcony by mistake. I can still see the deep scratches in the window sill. She must have gone into a blind panic on seeing me leave and then discovering she was locked out. She fought extremely hard to come back in. It cost her her life.
If only she had simply waited, trusted things would turn out OK and enjoyed herself by playing with the flowers on the balcony, looking at whatever passed by in the meantime.
Wait. Trust. Enjoy.
Says the scaredy cat.