This Cat

A Story

by Karen E. Bender
Log in or register to post comments

What a perfect jewel of a story. Each moment so recognizable. The reader has no choice but to stand up with the narrator at the end and walk with her into the house, into the next thing her life brings her.

This story covers so much ground.

Love this.

I cried when I read it on Sunday. I cried again when I re-read it today. Life can change on a dime, and the author illustrates that perfectly.

I appreciated the complexity in this seemingly simple story of a mom buying a cat with her kids. Not just the complexity of death and the fragility of the human body and the occasional bogs of marriage, but the complexity of children, even at such young ages. Their nonchalance and fussiness. Their innocence and generosity. Well done. I loved the line: “The children didn’t understand any of it and they did, completely.” Although the ending is left wide open, it doesn’t matter. This family is going to be okay.

So Buddhist; present in this very moment, and that is all.

"I wasn’t young anymore, yet I had many desires, one of which was my yearning to nurse the cat."

Good stuff.