Oh very young, what would you leave us this time …

- see Cat Stevens

It is after midnight and my trek takes me near. Looking across a deserted study, chairs facing a blank and silent screen, a feline form rises against a bright night sky as if one approaches from across a great distance. Rita, a house cat, watches out across the way, motionless, musing the night.

The young woman last night was fully animated as she told me of her feelings when a mouse had scurried across the floor, her feet pulled up, her knees hugged tight against her chest. Then we pondered the question of acquiring another house cat. Her cat was just too fat, bowlegged from carrying so much weight and of little use in such pouncing. And I, with brilliant or merely fortuitous timing, said a word and she laughed so hard that

her nose fell off.

Well, surely I exaggerate. And in a thousand years it will not matter anyway.

The riddle of the Sphinx may not have been the riddle of cats and mice; the question that we pondered may never have been answered. And the ones that followed us into the new year about men and women may forever lie watching.

But in the fading night we rocked in our wooden chairs, our eyes flashing a timeless joy for a few moments.

Now Rita has come around and pounced up into my lap, the rattle in her throat gradually quieting, my hand barely tracing her ardent spine.