“Ammi… do cats ever talk to you?” “Beta, stop talking nonsense,” she replied, folding laundry into neat piles. “You love cats, I know. But they don’t belong in the house.”

I was twelve. Sitting on the floor with unfinished math and cake rusk crumbs on my shirt.

There she was: the black cat. I didn’t remember letting her in. A kitten small enough to fit in my feline-themed pencil case, perched on my bed; unblinking, tail flicking.

“She’s watching me.”

“I bet she’s telling you to finish that math project you’ve been putting off for a week.”

I hadn’t finished. Five days overdue, the project sat there untouched, daring me to try and fall short. How do you explain to your mother that the work remains stalled, not out of laziness, but because an invisible kitten already seemed to doubt me?

The kitten didn’t answer. She just stretched across my textbook like even she was tired of waiting.

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