book of days serial #8
He then opened the door fully. It was dark in the after noon, a darkness smelling of domesticity, of vacuum cleaner brush stripes on the nap of the carpet. He turned on the lights. The cat was lying on the futon and the light was waking her up. She squinted her eyes, thrust her forelegs out, and got up to her haunches. Every time he saw her half awake it made him think of the times when he was a child and would leave his room in the early mornings and bury his face in the fur of the sleeping family cat until he grew older and couldn’t go to her in the mornings because he had started losing the hours necessary for such indulgence. Sleeping them into the earth. But the cat was a cedary soft odor. He tried to not even think about how he grew older, less inquisitive and more exhausted. Grew to be like the cat in all the wrong ways. The ways that made one a poor human being. The cat walked toward him now and cooed, her hair mussed from sleep. Everything she did reminded him of the days when he lived in a real house.