The Grimalkin & Me by Rebecca Wells

Autumn flame, coal hatch black interspersed with snow fox white tufts, this young cat had become gremalkin alongside me. Nanny Wells told tale of when the lady doctor in Liverpool did her rounds arrayed with a fur stole and a stethoscope about her neck. Pillar box red, a British institution.

When we found her, she was in a cage pulling at stiches in her side. Home, she dragged herself along the carpet, her hind legs jerking forwards, as though sporting britches, such did her fur plume. Mesmerised I looked on: What is this wonder? A cat that moves like some mechanised bunny! Worms. Once treated, the articulation of her limbs was as standard. 

Her mew is silver filigrene. Aching, insistent; sometimes mute, and all the more ardent in its soundlessness. If she is angry, she will poo in propitious places: where the foot falls unthinking in daily business. Otherwise she dabs about, mustering sanguinity about the place as dust falls spiralling in sun haze down. She is Queen, her eye green-amber. 

Fourteen: hard at work, thirsting, quiet, the circumference narrow. The cat, just beyond one, venturing for the first time outside, but not farther than the wooden slatted fence. This is suburbia.

Twenty two: there had been an avalanche which had gone before, broadening the scope. The cat and I moved to the bustle by the sea, totem in the dark. Purple walls and red, plush velveteen cushion, some harem, she languished, shedding furs. 

Now we are become more circumspect. The look in her eye from time to time indignant. Dried food and rest. No more castles in the sky, we have pie and an early night, and our work is real. The skeletons of true dhamma, dusky we are together, grimalkins two, she nineteen, I thirty one.