Yuka, from the neighborhood, got in touch.
“It’s been a while. Nera is fading. She lived well. It may be a matter of today or tomorrow.”
Two years ago, an old woman in the neighborhood left this town. Many cats lost the one who fed them.
Two years before she left, her husband had passed away.
Nera was the black cat the old man had doted on, and when the old woman left, she was worried about that cat.
When we took Nera to the vet, it turned out her spaying had been done by quite an old method — she was apparently a very old cat.
That’s how Yuka and I ended up facing the cats of this town. The record of it is kept on another site. That summer, we faced more than forty cats in all, and the ones we could actually care for were only a few. Nera was one of them, and I still live with four cats now.
I tried taking Nera in at my house for a while too, but she and Lyra didn’t get along, so I asked Yuka to take her.
By the time we started looking after her, she was already an old cat, and we said she probably didn’t have long. That was two years ago. In the end, this girl was loved by the old man, watched over by the old woman, loved by Yuka and her children — maybe she was happy, I thought.
Someday Lyra, who lives with me, will also leave on a day like this… I found myself thinking that.
It wasn’t about rescuing a cat out of pity. It was an encounter, the way paths cross. So you see — I was given that experience.
Thinking about these things, coming to know them — that has been the experience.
It still is.