One life. Many chapters. Beneath the stars of Matariki.
This short story imagines an old cat reflecting on a lifetime of love, loss, belonging and change beneath the winter sky over Diamond Harbour.
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Before dawn the harbour barely breathes. I sit on the fence rail by the jetty. Across the water the lights of Lyttelton port shimmer beneath the stars. The dark water is still and I breathe in the scent of somebody’s log fire. Every year when the nights are at their longest, the nine stars of Matariki return. I know this because I have watched them for many winters.
They say that cats have nine lives. This is human nonsense. I have had only one but it has held many lives inside it.
First I was a small bundle of ginger fluff shivering under a shed in a wet paddock. My mother had gone away to find food and never came back. For a long time I waited for the sound of her return, listening for paws in the grass and the small familiar noises she made when she wanted me to follow. I never saw my mother again.
I learned hunger before I learned much else. I learned that rain found its way through the smallest of gaps and that cold crept upwards from the ground. I learned to curl myself into the tiniest possible ball and tuck my nose beneath my tail. I nearly died from hunger and cold.
The first star rises.
Then came the boy with muddy knees and a quiet voice. He smelled of grass and milk and kindness. He lay on his stomach and reached beneath the shed but his arms weren’t long enough to grab me. He waited for me to crawl towards him then carried me home inside his jersey, my claws caught in the wool and my heart beating like a frightened drum. He took me home and for several nights I slept curled against his chest and woke whenever he moved. Gradually my heart slowed. My belly filled and I grew stronger. He gave me a name but it was not the name I would have chosen. Humans seldom get these things quite right.
The second star glows.
I learned to love lying in the warm sun on the doorstep. I learned the places where mice ran beneath the long grass and the exact time the kitchen door opened in the morning. I even learned to love the slobbering dog who wanted to be my friend. At first I regarded him as a large, cheerful idiot. He followed me everywhere and eventually we reached an understanding. We patrolled the boundary together, two creatures who belonged. At night I sometimes slept on the boy’s bed. I would look down smugly through narrowed eyes at the dog lying on the floor. He wasn’t allowed on the bed. Those were good years.
The third star joins the others.
As the years passed the boy grew tall. His muddy knees disappeared behind long trousers and his voice deepened. He spent less time lying in the grass and more time looking towards the horizon.
Then one morning he left with a bag. He crouched beside me before he went and rubbed the place beneath my chin that always made me purr. He promised to return and for many evenings I waited on the step when the light began to fade. I knew the sound of every car that came along the road. I knew footsteps, gates and voices. Eventually, I stopped waiting on the step.
The fourth star burns steadily.
Then came the night of the storm. The wind tore through the trees and rain hammered against the house. A gate banged somewhere in the darkness. The dog barked and somebody opened a door. I ran into the night, unsure why I was so frightened. I remember only the rain, the trees bending above me and every familiar smell disappearing beneath the water. I ran until my paws hurt and I had to sleep.
By morning, the world smelled new and washed. Nothing smelled familiar to me. For a long time I searched for the dog, for the house, for the boy who had once carried me inside his jersey. In the storm they had somehow mingled together to become a memory of home.
The fifth star flickers.
The woman with silver hair came next. I watched her house for three days before I trusted her. On the first evening she left food beside the back door. On the second she left the door open. On the third it rained and I went inside. She sat at the kitchen table while I ate and spoke to me as though we had already been introduced. Later she found a towel and rubbed the rain from my fur while I pretended I wasn’t enjoying it. I stayed that night. Then another.
There was a chair by the window where the afternoon sun fell and a garden with warm stones and lavender. There was no dog and for a while I missed him. Sometimes I still do.
The sixth star rises.
We are both old now, the woman and I. She moves slowly in the mornings and so do I. There are pills beside her teacup and sometimes one hidden in my food, although she seems to believe I haven’t noticed it. We understand each other.
There are long seasons of comfortable chairs and sleeps in the sun. I know every stone in the garden, every turn of the path, every window and the faces that look out from them.
Sometimes there are new faces, little ones with sticky hands and flushed cheeks. They chase me until the woman tells them not to. Later, when they have become quiet, one of them will sit beside me and run a careful hand along my back. Sometimes there are no faces at all, only the woman and me and the sound of the wind around the house.
The seventh star shimmers.
My joints grow stiff and stairs are for younger cats. I choose the flat places now and follow the sun as it moves from room to room. Some days the woman sits beside me without speaking. Her hand rests on my back and we watch the harbour together. There is no need to talk.
I have learned that everything changes and yet everything remains. The boy is gone. The dog is gone. The shed and the paddock belong to another lifetime. Yet sometimes when I am half asleep in the sun, I smell grass and milk. I hear a dog breathing beside me. I feel the steady beat of a young heart beneath a woollen jersey. Nothing is ever entirely lost.
The eighth star hangs above the harbour.
Tonight the air smells of frost and smoke from someone’s log burner. The harbour is quiet and the water is still. Getting onto the fence rail took longer than it once did. Tomorrow I may decide that fences, like stairs, are for younger cats. But tonight I am here.
Across the harbour, the lights still shimmer. Inside the house a woman with silver hair sleeps. Tomorrow she will get up and put her pills beside her teacup. The sun will find the warm stones in the garden and I will follow it from room to room. The little ones will grow taller. One day they will no longer have sticky hands. Winters will come and go and when the nights are at their longest, the stars will return. I am an old cat with a rough coat and slow steps and I am not afraid of the darkness.
The ninth star joins the others.
Humans always said cats had nine lives. Beneath the stars of Matariki with the harbour before me as it has always been, I think of the life that brought me here and the days still waiting beyond tonight.
I have only ever had one life. It has simply been full. That is enough.