Keisha

The post I have most wanted to write would have a cat at its core. A cat – it would not be about her: wouldn’t she simply turn and walk away at such attention? Wouldn’t it bore her, writing which does not flash those lights around the room with which she loves to play: reflected lights, from the round handmirror we keep for her, and the laser pointer whose red point she will chase around and around in circles?

How intent she is, watching for lights, as if they are the only serious business in the world! 10.30 and the sunlight falls in a shaft through the pine trees in the garden and the kitchen windows. She knows; she is waiting. She comes in to call you. The light is there: bring the mirror. That was dad’s duty. He was a reluctant cat owner, that is true – he always was, for all three of our cats. Or is that only what he said?

Either way, come 10.30, or whatever time it was when the light came through the pines and the panes of glass, he would tilt the mirror so it caught the light and let the reflect light run along the cupboard doors. And then, later in the day, she’ll wait at the threshold of the living room, for when a shaft of light will slant in from the sun as it moves to the east, and so to the other side of the house.

Lights! The day turns around them. The round mirror lies on the coffee table. The laser beam pointer is close. She associates me with its silver shaft and a red moving spot. I and others like me – men, it tends to be; she knows who we are in advance, she’s sorted us out: he is a light-entertainer, the tilter of mirrors. He, another, is the one who plays rough.

For how much of my time in the South is she present, Keisha. And by her presence does she change my solitude, she keeps on its edges, sleeping close to me, stepping across the table towards the laptop, or crossing the computer desk to reach the window from where she likes to watch the world. And even when you are in another room, you can hear her, in this modern house, as she jumps down from the window sill to the carpeted floor and then makes her way downstairs.

Left alone for too long, and she will cry. When doors are closed against, she cries, disconsolate, and goes to find the makeup brush she once picked out of my sister’s make up bag. Picks it up and continues to cry, the brush in her mouth. Until you open the door and she drops it, that brush, which we imagine is a memory of the kittens who, we were told, were taken away from her too early.

No, you are not alone, although she only invades your solitude when she knows it’s time for lights, or food, or her 9 P.M. Iams. Not alone – though, infinitely solicitous, she will only reach a paw to you and lay it on your arm to attract your attention. A paw touches you softly. There: now you know her by way she would announce her presence. There.

At other times, and perhaps only with me, her playmate on the many days five years ago when I returned to the South when I fell out of employment, she likes to play roughly. There are signals that she and I have worked out: time for rough play, time for the swipe of paws, time for an open, sharp-toothed mouth and the infinite attentiveness of her eyes, watching. Rough play. She watches me through the slats of wood along the stairs. I am to dangle a piece of string enticingly and she to be enticed: those are the rules. Not alone: many times, I’ve said to myself, I would like to write of her, Keisha (not Keysha, as my mum spells it).

Keisha: where has he gone, the man who used to tilt the round mirror in his hand so she could follow the light? Where he is he, the one whose presence in the garden would encourage her to make her way in the grass? Outside, alert, she was only half our cat, watchful as she was of the big cats who came over the fence. And where has he gone, he who would make a noise when those bigger cats rattled the catflap?

But she is asleep again, on top of the amplifier we turn on so it will be warm for her who likes to sleep there. Asleep: so does her day pass in sleep, sprawled, limbs stretched, at the level of our chests. So when she wakes does she keep watch on us, until, in the evening, she jumps down to the floor, and then, crossing the table on which she is forbidden (pre-emptively will she open her mouth and make her cat’s growl as she crosses, knowing one of us will say, Keisha down!) comes to the sofa and lies, her white belly exposed to us.