The cat

I was in this old abandoned house, and I went into one of the bedrooms, it was obviously a little girls room everything the previous owners had was still there but it was layered with years of dirt and grime and neglect, while I was looking around at all these memories some stranger left behind this really old cat came limping out of the closet, he looked like he’d been there ever since these people left, just abandoned, alone, he was dirty, his fur wasn’t healthy and neither was he, it was obvious he’d been scavenging all these years to survive, i picked up a picture off the dresser and wiped the dirt off the glass, and there was a happy little girl holding her new baby kitten, my heart broke, the old cat must have been abandoned shorty after, but he never ran, maybe he was just too old I don’t know, he was missing most of his teeth, and his grey and white markings were so filthy and matted you couldn’t tell that’s the color they actually were, I picked him up and held him in my arms and I just wept for him, he’d stayed here all these years, alone, waiting for this little girl…I pulled the back off the picture frame and found his name written on the back of the picture so I rocked him and whispered his name as I pet him and cried the first time I said it his ears flicked slightly, the second time they perked up…the third time he let out the most pitiful meow I’d ever heard it was heart wrenching then he licked my cheek this poor cat had waited all these years for that little girl to come back and hold him just like this and pet him and say his name, and she never had…he died in my arms that night, I gave him a proper burial under the willow tree in the yard, and as I was crying below that tree was when I woke up…