Tabula Rasa

She meows from the gut, and purrs like a queen. She is slight, she is fiercely independent, and she is my life. I can feel myself unravelling with overwhelming worry. I lower myself onto my hands and knees and I crawl through the house as she does, imaging my bushy tail imitating hers, praying with every slinky manoeuvre that I can recreate her final journey. From this angle, my world changes. Undersides of tables and zoomed views of skirting joints are suddenly on display, exploded to a magnitude I had never known before. Her world, now mine, is expansive. I continue my four-legged search, clambering up surfaces and gently lowering myself back down. How does she leap as she does? The heights and falls petrify me. They make my hair stand on end. I wonder if she is scared, alone, and hopeless. I can only imagine the morbid squalor she must be in. The thought brings a lump to my throat. I feel myself draining. I must rest. From her bed, I haul myself from frenzied slumber. I see a gap in the wall, dozens of desperate claw marks surrounding the cavity. A pathetic mew seeps from my withered lips.