Half past four every morning, Lentil’s left eye would crack open first, her right eye stubbornly shut as if refusing the day on principle. She’d stretch one paw, then the back leg diagonal to it (never the matching one), her spine arching in a precise sequence honed across seven years of feline existence.
My torbie shadow. My striped and patched timekeeper.
The apartment wasn’t much. It was just a one-bedroom overlooking the loading dock of a furniture warehouse, but through Lentil’s amber-green eyes, our kingdom stretched eternal. The windowsill her watchtower, the ratty armchair her throne.
“You’ve got business today?” I’d ask her, knowing damn well she did. Same business as yesterday: watching. Always watching.
Lentil vibrated response without sound, the tips of her red-and-black patched ears twitching toward the window. A pigeon had landed on the fire escape. The bird’s crime? Existing where Lentil could see it.
Her pupils expanded until they nearly erased the green-gold of her irises—black holes devouring light. The torbie’s tabby stripes seemed to darken along her sides while she calculated trajectories, the tortoiseshell patches across her back rippling as muscles tensed beneath.
What the hell does she think she’ll do if the window actually opens? I’ve wondered this daily for years.
We had our rituals. After breakfast (her: overpriced grain-free nonsense that had better not run out; me: black coffee and whatever didn’t require cooking), Lentil would station herself at the apartment’s single sunbeam. It would travel six inches across the floor throughout the morning, and she’d follow it with the precision of an astronomer tracking a comet.
Sometimes I’d interrupt her meditation with the audacity of my existence: opening the fridge, typing too loudly, breathing. She’d fix me with a stare that contained multitudes: disappointment, irritation, reluctant tolerance, and (though she’d never admit it) connection.
“Sorry for the noise, Your Majesty,” I muttered while making lunch.
Lentil blinked slowly. Translation: apology accepted, but barely.
The vet once told me torbies had “tortitude”: some cocktail of sass and independence that made them complicated companions. Complicated, yes, but also strangely stabilizing. When I lost my job last winter, spending three weeks in unwashed sweatpants staring at the ceiling, it was Lentil who established order. Food bowl empty at 7:04am: unacceptable. Window closed when the afternoon birds arrived: criminal negligence. Her indignation dragged me through the motions until I could feel them again.
Evening brought her most peculiar habit. As darkness gathered, she’d climb onto the kitchen counter (forbidden, yet somehow her jurisdiction), and press her face against the toaster’s chrome side, staring at her reflection. Not preening, not even particularly attentive, just watching herself watch herself, an infinity of torbie cats falling backward through the reflective surface.
“Existential crisis or narcissistic tendencies?” I asked.
She didn’t answer, but she never needed to. The torbie continued her self-observation while I moved around her making dinner.
When night fell, she would claim her spot at the foot of my bed, spinning three-and-a-half times (never four, never three) before settling. Her purr vibrated through the mattress, not the contented rumble of comfort, but something mechanical, purposeful, like she was generating energy for some mysterious nocturnal project.
Maybe she was.
I turned off the light, and in the darkness, felt Lentil’s weight, modest in pounds but somehow massive in presence. A small burning universe of fur and whiskers, keeping silent vigil over our shared solitude.
“Night, weirdo,” I whispered.
The purring paused, just long enough to acknowledge I’d spoken, then resumed its rhythm.
Tomorrow would unfold identically: the asymmetrical stretch, the watching, the sunbeam tracking, the toaster communion, but it wouldn’t be repetition, not really. It would be continuation, another stitch in the endless embroidery of days we were creating together.
Outside, the city rumbled on without us.
Inside, Lentil watched. And somehow, being witnessed by those mismatched patches of fur and judgment made existence feel less accidental, like we were both exactly where we were supposed to be.
Even if that place was just a crappy apartment with one decent sunbeam.