23 July 2004
The True Parable of the Cat
We had a black cat for a while. It hung around the school and we fed it our chicken bones. It attached itself to us, laying in the sun on our kitchen floor and acting like it belonged there. Sometimes we liked it, in that way that humans are naturally drawn to otherness that can be personified. Sometimes we hated it, because it meowed too much and demanded too much attention. It’s gone now, maybe eating someone else’s chicken bones, maybe dead. We’re leaving soon ourselves, and all I can say at the end is that, we had a black cat for a while.