I had a little ginger cat. I found him in a field, stolen from his mother, a real wild cat. He was two weeks old, maybe a little more, but he already… - Eugène Ionesco

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I had a little ginger cat. I found him in a field, stolen from his mother, a real wild cat. He
was two weeks old, maybe a little more, but he already knew how to scratch and bite. I
fed him and petted him and took him home. He became the sweetest cat. Once, he hid in
the sleeve of a visitor’s coat. He was the most polite creature, a real prince. When we
came home in the middle of the night, he would come greet us, his eyes all sleepy. Then
he’d go back to sleep in our bed. One time the door was closed to our bedroom — he tried
to open it, he pushed it with his behind, and he got angry and he made a beautiful noise.
He shunned us for a week. He was terrified of the vacuum cleaner. He was really a
cowardly cat, defenseless, a poet cat. Once we brought him a toy mouse and he hid
under the cabinet. We wanted him to experience the outside world. We put him on the pavement right outside the window. He was so scared. There were pigeons all around
and he was frightened of pigeons. He meowed with despair, pressed against the wall.
All animals and all other cats were strange creatures that he mistrusted or enemies that
he feared. He was only happy with us. We were his family. He thought we were cats
and cats were something else. But still, one day, he went out on his own. The big dog
next door killed him. He was lying there like a cat doll, a puppet ripped open with an
eye gouged out and a paw torn off, like a stuffed animal damaged by a sadistic child.

I had a dream about him. He was in the fireplace, lying on the embers. Marie was
surprised he didn’t burn. I said, “Cat’s don’t burn. They’re fireproof.” He came out of
the fireplace, meowing in a cloud of smoke. But it wasn’t him — it was another cat, ugly
and fat and female. Like his mother, the wildcat. He looked like Marguerite.