The Neighbor’s Cat
by Rebecca Gaffron

I could have followed you home from work—lingered across the street, waiting till you traded your suit for jeans. Watching you relaxed and alone, moving past the windows.

I could have arrived out-of-the-blue, like some hiccup in time and space transporting us to a different doorway where I once stood unannounced and uninvited. That time, when the door closed behind us the rest of the world was shut out. Or that’s how it felt. And I didn’t care because for that moment you were the entire world, and you were mine. Or perhaps I was yours.

Instead, I become like the neighbor’s cat. I let you catch glimpses of me on the periphery, giving you the opportunity to warm to me, or the chance to turn away.

But you seem interested, even encouraging. So I come closer. I find myself in friendly companionship; so familiar it feels like it never slipped away, like all the years apart meant nothing. And I wonder what strange haze clouded my perceptions. What made me confuse this warm congeniality for passion?

You are not so undone. You set ground rules and establish boundaries. Never feed the neighbor’s cat. Don’t let it on the bed.

At first your rules seem absurd. Then this power between us slips out. This love that seizes me without warning, that fills and empties me all at once. It sneaks into the odd glance and our subtle shifts closer to each other.

And you devour me with that look, the one that changes your sparkling blue eyes. They turn hungry and heartrending—challenging me to ignore the boundary you’ve so painstakingly erected, enticing me to alight on its edge, to balance there for an instant, then plunge into whatever lies beyond.

We pull our gaze apart and laugh nervously, trying to break the spell of something we’ve never understood. And your entire being cries out—you shouldn’t be here. But it’s not a request for me to go.

So I stay, seeking some revelation. I want to confess my guilt. My love. To learn if that look of yours is genuine. Or if I imagined it. Possibly misread it.

But the look is real. It claims you, leaving me trapped between your words and eyes. And though you are close enough to touch, I do not reach for you. I concentrate on your fingers. I’d forgotten how even and squared they are. I try to forget how they felt on my skin. I ignore their slight tremble.

Just as I ignore the quiver in your lips as you inform me you’ve never loved me. And then you say you don’t really know what love means. You’re not sure you believe in it. You think it’s just a societal constraint, or perhaps a crutch, like religion. But you confess you care for me deeply. And it isn’t a brush off, because your eyes reveal something real. And no one but you has ever looked at me that way.

This is the moment I have sought and dreaded. The reason for my visit—to bridge the fundamental disconnect between your words and eyes, to finally find the truth.

But the truth is I’m a cat that belongs to someone else. And you’ve never wanted a cat, you don’t even like cats. But for some reason, you’ve developed a strange affection for the neighbor’s cat. You look forward to her touch. You fret over her. You allow, even compel, her to cross your boundaries.

You even consider letting her into your life. Making her yours. Except that she belongs to someone else. And your lover is allergic. And it will be hard to make a life together if you bring along this cat.

But more than anything, sometimes it hurts when the cat contents on your lap. And you recognize that bitter-sweet ache. Others call it love. And that’s a boundary you will not cross. Not now. Not for a neighbor’s cat.