Monday morning, Hathaway spent a good fifteen minutes with the lint brush, removing all the white cat hairs from his trousers. At work, Lewis was still sniffling, sucking on cough drops, and making all the same, distracting, sickness sounds he had made the week before.
"I thought you were almost over that cold, Sir."
"Yeah, it's going." A bit defensive. Hathaway bit his tongue and resisted a lecture on how to fight infections.
When Hathaway got home that evening, Fiona was right at the door, with her usual chirp. He bent down and petted her head, checking to see how the scratches were healing. They looked pretty good.
"You're a nice little cat, aren't you? Want some dinner?" He filled her dish, got himself a glass of wine, and went to relax in the front room. First, he headed for the bedroom to hang up his jacket and tie. It was then he noticed little scraps of paper all over the floor in the hallway. She had destroyed the toilet paper again.
There was little about the cat that was predictable. Sometimes she flew around the flat like a tiny dervish, whirling, galloping, her dainty feet sounding like clattering hooves. Other times, she could sleep for hours, and was an embodiment of the word, "Relaxed."
It was those times when she was most able to surprise him. Though she looked asleep, when his back was turned she would steal food from a plate he had left unattended or suddenly appear, as if transported by magic, in the chair where Hathaway was just about to sit.
She rearranged anything left lying out. Socks showed up in the kitchen, pencils were stashed under the sofa, paper wads accumulated in his shoes, wine-bottle corks ended up in the bathroom. Hathaway was amazed at how he had taken for granted the order he used to have in his life.
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