A cat was surplus to my requirements.  You’d been fired again.  Like yours, her world was a box.  Though you denied any connection, I always knew that the haggard man mainlining at the station would have seen you coming.

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His illegal companion was half Siamese, greyer than pumice.  A startle of aquamarine made you reach for the cash, your charity sweeter than his next fix.  You parted with a tenner; she landed in Paradise.  On all four paws.  Oh, our garden was better than Edenic.  She pissed everywhere in the house, out of gratitude.

Over the fence scratched Romeo, drawn in like fate.  We could just make them out plighting their troth (since all cats are grey in the dusk).  You were radiant with glee.  I’m glad one of us thinks this is funny, I said.  You assured me she might not conceive.

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Three out of five kittens lived.  Males.  You monitored her contractions like a war correspondent; you phoned the helpline; you pulled out laggards by the tail. 

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Your favourite was kept. 

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We got round to having her spayed.  He of course needed doing as well, yet he still played the hot young cat for a season.  Entitled, he’d go at her, neutered but unbowed, teeth sunk in her scruff.  She’d be tabbied to molten, her snarls tearing out in crescendo.  (Why the neighbours never complained is mysterious.  I have more than one theory.) 

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Then she’d curl, blood-warm, into a Zen stone on our bed.

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She is old dust.  We’re the grey ones now. 

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Even greyer.