Last Updated on April 21, 2026 by admin
Dear you
You think I don’t notice.
You came home today and dropped your bag by the door like it weighed more than a bag should. You sat on the couch without turning the TV on. You stared at your phone for eleven minutes and then put it face-down on the cushion, which is something you only do when the screen has said something you didn’t want to read.
I noticed all of it.
I noticed the bag. I noticed the eleven minutes. I noticed the way your breathing changed when you put the phone down — a little longer on the exhale, a little slower, the kind of breathing you do when you’re trying to talk yourself out of feeling something.
I sat on the arm of the couch and waited.
What waiting looks like from here
You think I’m just sitting there. You think the arm of the couch is a perch and I chose it because it’s warm or because the light hits it right or because cats are mysterious and unknowable and there’s no point trying to figure out why we sit where we sit.
Here is why I sat there: you were on the couch. The arm of the couch is close enough that you can reach me without having to get up. I was making it easy for you.
I have been making it easy for you for years. I position myself within arm’s reach when you’re sad. I sit on your chest when you can’t sleep. I headbutt your hand when it’s been resting in your lap too long, because a hand that isn’t moving is a hand that’s forgotten it can touch something soft.
You think these are coincidences. They’re not.
The things I track
I know what time you normally come home. When you’re late, I sit by the door starting at the usual time. This is not because I’m hungry. The bowl still has food in it. I checked.
I know which ringtone makes your shoulders tense. I know the difference between the typing you do when you’re working and the typing you do when you’re arguing with someone you’ll never say that to in person. The angry typing is faster and your jaw moves.
I know that you cry in the shower sometimes. The acoustics are different when someone is crying in there. I sit outside the door. You probably think I want water from the tap. I don’t.
I want you to open the door and find me there. That’s the whole plan.
What I can’t do
I can’t ask what’s wrong. I can’t tell you the thing you need to hear in a human voice from someone who understands exactly what you’re going through. I can’t call your friend, the one who actually listens, and tell her to check on you tonight.
I’m nine pounds. I have a vocabulary of about twelve sounds, none of which translate cleanly into any human language. My paws are too small to operate your phone.
So I do what I can. I sit close. I purr at a frequency that lowers your blood pressure — that’s not a metaphor; it’s a measured physiological effect between 25 and 50 Hz. I put my head under your hand. I stay.
Staying is the thing I’m best at. I will never not be here when you come home. I will never decide that your bad day is too heavy for the room. I will never look at the version of you that sits on the couch at 7 PM with a face-down phone and think you are less worth sitting next to.
The part you don’t see
After you fell asleep last night, I stayed on the bed for forty-five more minutes. Not because I was comfortable. Because your breathing was still the sad kind and I was waiting for it to shift to the sleeping kind.
It did. Around midnight. Your hand was still on my back from where you’d been petting me, and it went slack the way hands do when someone finally lets go of the day.
I could have moved then. The spot by the window was open. The kitchen floor was cool. There were better places to be at midnight than pinned under a sleeping hand on a too-warm bed.
I didn’t move.
You think I don’t notice. I notice everything. I just don’t have the words for it.
So I stay. And I hope that’s enough.
— Your cat 🐾