the cat says...

the owner has been behaving strange lately. there is certainly something different in the air. i hear snatches of her phone conversation: phrases "packing my things" and "sad to leave" pops out really often. i must confess that i'm rather concerned. does that mean that she's leaving paris soon?

and if so, will she abandon me on the cold cobblestone streets of paris?

oh, how cruel to do that with the onset of the cold dark winter!

aha, crafty cat that i am, i've been extra affectionate to her these days. i want to secure my place in her heart. i stretch out and invite her to tickle my belly when she comes home - see, i've been waiting for you all day! i purr louder than usual at night - hear me even in your dreams! i play with my cat-toys every night - look how cute and adorable i am!

i pay extra attention to my grooming, licking diligently behind the ears and all those hard to reach places. sleek and gleaming, my short haired coat is impeccable. my ears are erect and my eyes are alert to her every move. my tail is straight. my claws are sharp. i'm the purrfect cat!

when she's not looking, i study her closely with narrowed eyes. what is she thinking now?

but do i want to leave france to be with her? i am after all, a french cat. even more, i'm a parisian cat: born and bred in the well-heeled suburbs of paris, used to living in the lap of luxurious indulgence. not at all like those gutter cats scavenging the streets for a pathetic morsel of food. how will my life change when she leave? if she leaves... i'm still not sure yet.

but...
if she leaves, will she give me away? back to the big house with my princess mother? or to one of her friends?
if she leaves, will she visit me often or will she forget about me?
if she leaves, will she miss me like how i'll miss her?

if she leaves, oh! i can't imagine my 9 lives without her!

... if she leaves, will she take me with her?

and if she takes me with her, will she enrol me for chinese classes?

time, stand still

the sand in the hourglass trickles down slowly, relentlessly. grain by grain by grain, every passing second counts down to my leaving paris.

i wrote about life in slow-mo some time ago, about how i sometimes felt that time had left me by, while others rushed around in their ever-buzzing, ever-important, ever-rushing business all around me. i sit in my little corner, my little eye in the hurricane vortex, sipping a nice cup of coffee, basking in the luxury of time.

these days, i feel that i have lost that calmness. the anchor that had held me in place had been uprooted by storms, and that i too, am rushing about the world. mindlessly, like a headless little chicken running fruitlessly in circles. spiralling out of control.

in a little more than 2 weeks, i board the plane that will whisk me away from paris. i have to bid adieu to a city i have grown to love. but my heart is not ready yet, perhaps it never will be.

it’s a beautiful tragedy to say farewell this way, a friend told me. he was always the melancholic poet. not i. tragedies belong to the stage, in ballets and operas. i've said goodbye too many times in the past few years. it never gets easier.

whether i like it or not, the rush of time has invaded my little corner and i'd taken too long to sip my coffee. it has turned cold in the autumn winds. the sand continues trickling down. too fast, too soon…

time, stand still.

neither

a friend came into paris from the compagne another town to see me on saturday. he insisted on meeting up when he heard that i was packing up and leaving soon. the last time we met, it was a long walk in london in spring last year. this time, we basked like lazy lizards in the autumn sun in a park.

as our ice creams melted in the unusually warm day, he told me about his family, his job search, his music, his sports and his new girlfriend.

i want to have 2 girlfriends, he announced out of the blue. a sexy one to sleep with and an intelligent one to talk about life with! what an amusing concept.

so which one is she? pretty or smart? i was curious.

neither! ice cream dripped everywhere as we collapsed with laughter.

my life in 9 cubic metres

the mover came to my apartment a few days ago. he glanced at the heap of paper piled up on my huge teak coffee table. i had stopped trying to put them away now. tax filing, termination of contracts with the internet provider, the electricity contract, housing insurance, banking, ... 3 years' worth of administrative mess. he was too professional to react to the paper disaster area. anyway, he's probably used to situations like this: last minute decisions to move.

i showed him around the living room: yes this. no that. i pointed to my table and then the chest of drawers. we looked at my bathroom and kitchen: everything except that and that. upstairs to the bedroom: the futon and all the clothes. he scrutinised everything, taking invisible measurements in his head, scribbling on his notepad.

9 cubic metres.

that was his conclusion.

all my worldly possessions... the books that fired my imagination, the music that haunts my evenings (and annoys my neighbours), my endless parade of shoes, the utensils that i create beautiful meals with, all my serious "clark kent" work clothes and my fun "supergirl" going out clothes... all that within a 9 cubic metre space.

the cube root of 9 is 2.0800838230519.

they can fit my entire life in paris into a cube with a length/breadth/height of less than 2.1 metres.

if i stretch out my arms within this cube, i would just about touch the top. if they put me inside this cube, together with the contents of my flat, and throw it into the sea, i would completely disappear from the face of this earth. not a trace of my existence except a few faded memories lingering in the dusty cobwebly corners of everybody's minds. wasn't she...? didn't she...? who's she...?

she? she's packing up. she's leaving paris. please don't forget her and her 9 cubic metre presence.