Dinner for One, With Guest

1 point · October 2026

He set two places out of habit, and then, rather than clear one, he put the cat on the chair.

The cat was not a dinner cat. The cat was a windowsill cat, a top-of-the-wardrobe cat, and she regarded the chair and the plate and the fork with the contempt of a creature who has been asked to participate in a metaphor.

Just for tonight, he said.

She stayed. This surprised him. She sat on the chair with her tail round her feet and watched him eat, and when he talked — he had not meant to talk, and then he was — she watched that too, with the particular attention of an animal who does not understand the words and is therefore listening to everything else.

He told her about the day. It had been a nothing day. He told her anyway. He told her about the man at the bus stop who had asked the time and then not listened to the answer. He told her about the email he had not sent. He told her, because she could not tell anyone, about the doctor, and the word the doctor had used, and how it had sounded in the room.

She got down before pudding. That was fair. He cleared her plate, which was clean, and washed it with his, and put both away in the cupboard, side by side, where they had always gone.