Our Cat Rafaello

He came over one day from the neighbour’s place.  He just turned up.  Cats don’t tell you when they’re coming.  We didn’t know his name, but we knew it wasn’t Rafaello.  No one calls their cat Rafaello, not around here.  We called him that so, when he just turned up, he belonged to us. 

He danced on the back lawn, swiping flies and bumblebees, biting at the long grass, doing somersaults.  He jumped on our window, trying to get in.  His four paws stayed a moment on the glass.  Another moment.  It was the only time he didn’t move.  He did everything that was possible, and some things that weren’t.

He came every day for weeks until I took his photograph.  When you take a photograph, you don’t think much about it.  I must have wanted some memories.  I didn’t need them, though.  I had Rafaello. 

Posters sprang up in the street, with ‘lost’ in big letters, a telephone number and a picture of Rafaello.  They were fixed, ironically, to trees and lamp posts, things which couldn’t move.  But the picture kept his spark.  He stared at something which had moved and caught his eye, but which was now no longer there. 

An old lady owned him.  She never got Rafaello back, or whatever name she used.  We never got him back either.  We have the photograph.

A pupil once told me about her guru.  A famous man.  His picture was on the wall.  She lowered her voice and sounded reverent.  She said he could make objects disappear.  I looked impressed, but I'd done that to a living mammal.