Rules

She sorts us according to type, to series. Seeing my brother-in-law, she thinks: he is one of those who will play with me. Seeing me, she thinks: and there is another. For her, one person is always nearly another; she understands the rules vary, and that she must open her mouth for a pill when my mum holds her jaws (‘swallow’!), just as she is always allowed to play-gnaw my hand when I put it out to her.

And when the one died who tilted the mirror so that she, paws skidding on the linoleum floor in her eagerness, could chase light around the kitchen? A cat’s optimism: another will come to tilt the mirror. She waits. Don’t I know the rules?