Her little joy lasted less than a handful of days. The dazzling light of the kitten Pombalina has sunk fast. Just one week ago she was sending loud cries to a cherished missing mother. “Find me,” she said, “I’m so lonely and everything is so scary, I don’t have big enough teeth yet.” Instead of welcoming back the beloved whiskers, she was abducted by strange people, then handled, washed, given medicines, all in the hope her tiny frame would grow stronger… but for whom? All passed her by without her consent, but she timidly submitted to everything. She was tired, she accepted any home that would have her.
Once she found herself in a new environment, she made a house in the midst of towels. Buried in fluff smelling of laundry she would dream about the litter, the familiar scents of warm milk and cuddly sleep, of the little brothers and sisters who, one by one, were fated to disappear. She stayed there most of the time, a soft bundle of silence enveloping her, emerging once in a while to eat and to be socialized, to play.
It’s curious how life has always a way of creeping into the most unlikely spaces. Pombalina’s short-lived existence took place in the fissure between the lonely fear of the dark streets and the dissolution of the body. In this negligible interval she had the time of her life, purring and wishing to jump, looking askance at the dog while getting her ears cleaned and biting avidly on fingertips.
The sun in Lisbon goes down today over a city of forgotten cats. This world is still big enough to be a wonder, but she will never know how far its cruelty and beauty can reach. She will never eat a cockroach, fall down the chest of drawers when she’s fallen asleep or brush her spotted head against the hand that feeds her. Her sight was limited to an irregular ridge of rags and towers of shoe boxes, the light in the towel rack went out so soon. Her frivolous name is her burial’s ultimate treasure, the only gift she was given, the sole proof she was here at all.
