page 155

Pet Food

There's a noise upstairs which he assumes is
the cat, returning before the storm. He's
engrossed in an article or would have
gone to check. Then something is knocked over
and he does put the magazine aside,
surer than ever that it's the cat. He's
slow to get to the door though, gazing at
the competing darknesses of weather
and early evening. There's a heavy creak
from the passage. With a quickening action
he reaches for the handle, which even
as he grasps begins to turn. The cat leaps
in the window and shakes itself, waltzes
down the stairs, sniffs the magazine, licks it.