I slid into the seat across from him. Up close, I could see the kitten’s ribs beneath her damp fur, the way her claws snagged on the wool of his sleeve—not trying to escape, just anchoring herself to this stranger who smelled of rain and old bread. “Is she yours?” I asked.
He didn’t look up at first, just ran a calloused thumb over the kitten’s head in a gesture so tender it ached. “No,” he said finally. “She found me.” His voice was rough but quiet, the kind that hadn’t been used much lately.
Three nights earlier, behind a bakery dumpster, he’d heard a sound like crumpled paper. There she was—half-drowned in a puddle, her mews thinner than the alley’s shadows. He’d given her the last bite of his ham sandwich (the meat torn into shreds small enough for her tiny mouth) and wrapped her in the only dry thing he owned: a moth-eaten scarf that still carried the faint scent of cedar from its better days. “Figured I could give her one warm night,” he admitted. “But when morning came, she climbed inside my coat instead of running away.”
I asked where they were going now. That’s when he showed me the napkin—the edges soft from being folded and refolded in his pocket. In smudged blue ink, it read: “She answers to ‘Mina.’ Please don’t leave her. If you find her—bring her home.” On the back, a phone number. And at the bottom, three words that made my throat tighten: “Her little girl.”
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