Horace had always been a loner. Relying on other cats just didn’t suit, didn’t sit well. Sure there had been times when you might need to run with another, feed with another, stay warm with another, but those were fleeting moments and the time soon came to move on, and so that’s what Horace did. Usually he’d slip away in the early hours before sunrise, his bed neatly made, the patchwork quilt folded across the bottom, and his pillows neatly stacked. So it was unusual to say the least when he came back to us that day. Unusual in that it was mid-September, the late summer skies already darkening with the approach of fall, the smell of it. And unusual in that Horace should have been well into the sardine run off the southern coast by now, the one constant in his nomadic existence. Every year as the days began to grow shorter Horace would begin to get that antsy feeling, start looking longingly to the door, start making the same old noises about how it was time to get going, that he was needed, the sardine crews relied on him to read the stars and show them the way. But here he was, passing the time with us, reading, playing chess, and sometimes even joining in with after dinner cards or games of backgammon with Mercy. As the days shortened and the leaves turned Horace seemed more content to stay, as if he was waiting for something, but he wouldn’t or couldn’t tell us what that was. And so September turned and October passed in a flourish of late summer bloom. Horace was with us in November, and would take early to the hearth to warm and stretch himself on the flagstones, resplendent as ever in his tuxedo coat. He would talk deep into the night, especially with the younger cats and even the kittens if they could stay awake. He seldom played with them during the day any more though, preferring to watch from his hammock. When I saw him last it was early, in the deep small hours before the dawn. As ginger cats are wont to do, I had risen to see the late appearance of Mars, from just off the shoulder of the Pleiades, and Horace was on the porch. He had no possessions, and he wasn’t wearing his travelling cap, and so I suspected he had perhaps wanted to see the red planet himself—as often we had talked about the worth of such omens. Horace glanced at me—then to the sky—”I am nine” he said simply, “I have you my family to thank for that.” Then he pushed through the yellow plank, and he was gone. ▲
