7 Lives

The tomcat was jumping and scratching its fur against the door and mewing. It was a feline of noble race, heavy white furred. It was very energetic. Maybe that convinced him. Maybe he absorbed a drop of the tomcat's energy; it gave him a lungful of air, just in time to save his life, as he was feeling as if he was choking of boredom. He took it in his home, he fed it, and as a reward the tomcat gave him a reason to live for. Nothing made him happier than watching Pisu play, hide from him, leer at him from behind the furniture, urge him to come after it. Other times, it fell asleep in his arms, while he was listening to Bach or Beethoven or Dvorak at the CD-player. It dutifully waited for him in front of the door in the evenings. It eye-talked to him. It somehow cheered up his deserted apartment's life.

Not even once he wondered whom might it have belonged to. All that he did was to...

... the tomcat gave him for a while what was missing. But short after that he realized it was only a palliative treatment.

The real cure for him came later on.

They met through the telephone. He woke up one night at the prolonged shrill of the telephone and, nervous and mumbling swears of all kinds, he threw a tetchy 'Hello!' into the receiver. The voice at the other end was even angrier. She had read his review in yesterday's newspaper and thought it was an insolence. The play he so disrespectfully talked about was, in her opinion, a masterpiece. She couldn't abstain herself from giving him a call and letting him know. Who he did he think he was?

They talked for more than an hour, at the end of which he came to give her justice, and, for being excused, he invited her to a movie. The rest came naturally.

What gained her complete sympathy was the cat. Linda liked it immediately. A person who owns a cat can't be a bad person.

His life - he knew it well - started on a new stage. The emptiness was filled; nothing could stay against his happiness. Linda was...