The Woman and the Cat, by Zoe Leetch
From the series Not Everyone Sees the Same Cat
Every evening, just before darkness settles over the small town, a woman dressed in black appears beneath the streetlamp that stands before the bridge with a cat as dark as her clothes balanced lightly in her palm. There are people who watch from their windows. They say she’d stand beneath the light, staring silently at the cat she holds in her hand before beginning to walk. No one knew anything about this mysterious woman. Not her name. Not where she came from. Nothing. Only that the cat she holds found her. No one ever dares to disturb the woman. She always appears right after the sun sets when the sky is black and the red moon shows itself and turns everything it gazes upon crimson. Children dare each other to follow her through the narrow blue streets as she walks, but they always turn back before the woman reaches the bridge. Something about the silence around her and the bridge felt unnatural. Even the stray dogs avoid the sound of her footsteps. Yet the cat she holds in her arms loves her completely. It had found her years ago on the night the sea swallowed the town’s lighthouse. Waves had crashed against the cliffs, bells rang wildly in the storm, and afterwards the cat appeared in-between the woman’s arms emerging together from the fog the storm had made. No one has ever heard the woman speak. Now she wanders the city each night searching for something only the cat seemed to understand. On this particular evening, the red moon hung unusually low above the rooftops, glowing like an ember in the turquoise sky. The cat suddenly stiffened in her hand, ears pointed toward the water beneath the bridge. The woman stopped beneath the lamp. The canal below them was perfectly still. Then came the music. Soft at first. A distant piano melody drifting upward from beneath the dark water. The woman’s breath caught. She knew that song. Slowly, she stepped closer to the railing while the cat watched the canal with unblinking eyes. Beneath the surface, faint golden lights flickered into existence one by one, forming the outlines of windows far below the water. An entire sunken city. And there, standing beneath the waves as though waiting for her, was a man in a long dark coat. He smiled sadly. The woman reached toward him without thinking. The cat dug its claws sharply into her sleeve. Suddenly the music stopped. The glowing city vanished. The canal became ordinary once more, black and empty beneath the lamp. For the first time ever, to the people watching from their windows, the woman spoke aloud. With a soft smile on her face, she whispered “Not yet”. The cat relaxed in her hand as the red moon glowed silently overhead, and together they continued walking through the quiet town, carrying all the things the world had lost but refused to forget.
by Zoe Leetch