A Cat's View of the Single Life

Persia, my little Siamese mix, sits in the exact center of the table, in front of the window, gazing into the night. The table is hers and her sister's. It's a good street to watch. There are people walking to and from the various stores, restaurants or the lake, just a few blocks away. Late at night, people arrive home in cars; boisterously, full of loud giggles or drunken arguments. Raccoons and feral cats roam; the raccoons amble confidently, owning the street; the cats, stealthier, close to the ground. In the day time, fat pigeons, blackbirds and robins sit on the telephone wires. Persia has learned to coo like a pigeon; I've caught her having conversations with her pals on the wire. She's also able to look directly into the highest branches of a lovely young tree. She watches the leaves in the light and the wind; the birds darting in and out of the branches, and the squirrels scurrying up, down and across everything. She doesn't have a yard or patio, but she has that window.

My last relationship never reaped the rewards of that word, only the dramas and several breakups and reconciliations. When I admitted it was finally over, my heart ached for a long time.

After one of our reconciliations, he told me he often rode his motorcycle down my street on his way home from work at night and thought about me as he passed by. This warmed my heart and I appreciated the implied romantic suffering. If I had only known that he was suffering too, my perspective would have been more optimistic, sensing that our next chance was imminent. But Persia knew. What else has she seen that I would have loved to see? She saw him the night he dropped off a DVD, through my open car window, as I had asked him to do. I didn't think he would without coming up to talk. When I went to my car the next morning and saw it in the driver's seat, the intense sadness I felt, seemed to include all the sadness I had ever felt in my life. Heartbreak in your twenties doesn't touch heartbreak in your forties. Persia, how did he look that night? Was he upset?

Priorities change. As I get older, being single and living alone mostly feels like a secret privilege. There are others like me, they get it.

Some nights I wake to the trains' horns as they thunder through town on their way to somewhere else, invoking pure romance and wanderlust. I see Persia in the window, gazing out, completely absorbed with her view of her world. I can imagine that my ex is there in the street, hearing the same train, looking up, thinking about me and wondering if we should try one more time.