Nina Fletcher saw him at half past seven in the morning.
Gary was standing by the lift, holding a cat. He cradled it against his chest with both arms. The cat was grey, mangy on one flank, and it smelled of basement so strongly that Nina took a step back.
“Lord,” she said. “What on earth is that.”
Gary did not answer. He rarely spoke to the neighbours. He pressed the lift button and stared at the floor indicator.
“Where did you dig him up?” she said—not a question, a statement. “He’s filthy. You’re not taking him home, are you?”
“I looked for him five months.”
The lift doors opened. Gary stepped inside and pressed the fourth floor.
Nina stayed in the lobby, watching the doors close. But Gary’s face was very happy. He kept his eyes fixed on the cat, and every time it stirred he gently adjusted its paws.
She later told the woman on the fifth floor that he had looked odd.
But why—she found out later.
The notices appeared in September. Small, printed on plain paper, with a photograph. The photo showed a cat. Grey, striped, whiskers shorter on one side than the other. Below the photo it said, in short, “Lost,” and a phone number.
Gary put them up himself. Early in the morning, before work, he went out with a roll of tape and a stack of leaflets. He went around lampposts, noticeboards, the walls by the shop. His fingers froze; the tape would not stick well in the cold, and he had to press it longer than usual.
Tom had gone missing at the end of August. He simply did not come home in the evening. The kitchen window had been left ajar.
At home, by the radiator, there was a bowl. Gary did not remove it.
The calls came for the first two weeks.
People reported grey cats. Striped cats. One ginger cat that, for some reason, they thought might do. Gary went to every call. He looked, shook his head, thanked them, and drove back.
In the third week a woman from Builder’s Lane rang, saying she had seen a similar one by the garages. Gary went that evening, after work, already in the dark. He walked between the garages with the torch on his phone, shining it under doors, calling. Nobody came out. Only a strange black cat looked at him from beneath a gate and went back into the darkness.
In October he started a notebook.
He wrote down the addresses he had been to. The names of the people who called. The dates. Sometimes short notes—“grey, but younger,” “wrong colour,” “owners found.” The pages grew. Gary sometimes flicked through the notebook in the evenings, not reading, just flicking.
A colleague at work, Vic, asked him one day what was up with him.
“Nothing,” said Gary.
“That’s exactly it,” said Vic, and did not ask again.
November was damp; it grew dark early.
Gary expanded his search area. He walked through courtyards a block away, two blocks away. He went into other people’s stairwells, looked on windowsills, under stairs. Sometimes he asked people in the yards. Most shook their heads without stopping. One old lady by the third entrance said she had seen a similar one near the transformer box in September, but could not remember clearly.
Gary thanked her. He walked to the transformer box. He stood there. Nobody, of course.
Nina Fletcher caught him in the lobby one day and said he should stop now; five months had passed, he ought to get another cat. She meant no harm.
“I don’t want another,” said Gary.
“Well, that’s silly,” she said.
He nodded and went to the stairs. Nina watched him go and thought how people drive themselves crazy over cats.
In December the calls nearly stopped.
The notices got wet, turned yellow, peeled off in places. Gary replaced them. He printed new ones, went out in the mornings with the roll of tape. He learned to hold the roll under his arm and unwind it with one hand while pressing the leaflet with the other.
On the third day of January he heard a sound.
Quiet. Barely there. Somewhere behind the basement door under the first entrance. Gary stopped. He listened. The sound did not come again.
He stood for a minute. Then he went to the caretaker for the key.
The caretaker, Sam, spent a long time looking for the key, found the wrong one, then found the right one. He asked what Gary had lost in the basement. Gary told him. Sam looked at him the way you look at someone it is better not to argue with, and gave him the key.
The door opened with effort; a smell of damp concrete, old wood, and something else rushed out. Gary switched on his torch and stepped inside.
The basement was long and low.
Gary walked slowly, shining the light under pipes, behind old crates, along the wall. The torch beam picked out a rusty bicycle with no wheel, a stack of planks, someone’s discarded camp bed with a sagging side. It smelled of damp and lime. Somewhere water dripped, rare and regular, like a clock.
“Tom,” said Gary.
He said it quietly. Not a call, more a check, the way you check the dark before you step into it.
No answer.
He went further, past a panel of wires, past old radiators stacked against the wall. The torch beam moved slowly. Gary was in no hurry. In five months he had learned not to hurry where hurrying was useless.
“Tom.”
Silence again. Only the drip somewhere. Only the hum of pipes overhead, warm, covered in dust.
He reached the far wall and stopped. He shone the torch into a corner. There were crates, three or four, stacked on each other, and between them and the wall was a dark space, narrow as a slit. Gary crouched. He shone the light in.
Two eyes reflected the beam.
He did not move. He just stared. His heart did something strange—not loud, but noticeable, as if it skipped a step and then caught up.
“Tom,” he said. Very quietly.
The eyes did not vanish. But the cat did not come out either. It sat in the gap between the crates and the wall, staring at the torchlight. Gary lowered the beam a little, so as not to blind it. Then he sat down on the floor. Straight on the concrete, not thinking about his clothes, not thinking about anything.
He just sat. And started waiting.
He did not know how long passed.
It was cold. The concrete drew the warmth from his jacket quickly and evenly. Gary did not move. He held the torch to one side, so that the slit was not completely dark, but not blinding the cat either. Sometimes he spoke, not loudly. Not calling, not coaxing. Just speaking, the way you speak when you need your voice to be near.
“It’s cold down here,” he said. “Five months. I never thought you’d be here.”
There was no sound from the gap.
“I went everywhere. I went to Builder’s Lane at night. Those garages, you don’t know. I filled a whole notebook with addresses.”
Somewhere in the dark the water dripped. The pipes hummed.
“The bowl is still at home. I never took it away.”
He heard a rustle before he saw movement. The cat came out of the gap slowly. Not straight towards Gary, but first to the side, along the crates, sniffed the air, stopped. Gary did not move. He watched. The cat was thin. A bald patch on its flank where the fur had not grown back. On one side of its face the whiskers were shorter. The left side.
It was him.
The cat took another step. Then another. Then it came to Gary’s leg and pressed its head into his knee. Once. As if checking. And stayed there.
Gary did not lift his hand straight away. He just sat. Then, carefully, slowly, he placed his palm on the cat’s head. Tom did not pull away. He only closed his eyes, and there was something so simple in that that Gary’s throat tightened.
He did not cry. He just sat on the cold concrete of his own building’s basement, his hand on the head of the cat he had searched for five months. And the cat stood beside him, silent. He had always been a quiet cat.
Getting up was harder than sitting down.
His legs had gone numb, and Gary rose slowly, holding on to the crates. Tom stepped back a pace, watching. Gary straightened, stood still. He had read that cats can go feral, forget people in as little as two weeks. And here—five months. Then he crouched again, this time on his haunches, and lifted the cat into his arms.
Tom did not resist. He was light, much lighter than he used to be. Gary pressed him to his chest and felt, under his palm, the small quick heartbeat.
They walked to the exit the same way. Past the camp bed, past the rusty bicycle, past the panel. Gary held the torch in one hand, the cat pressed against him with the other. Tom did not stir. Only once he shifted his paws, settling more comfortably, and went still again.
At the door Gary stopped.
Then he pushed the door open and stepped out.
Outside it was morning. Grey January morning, no sun. The snow lay old and packed, with black tracks along the path. Gary squinted against the light.
He stood by the door, holding Tom.
That was when Nina Fletcher saw them.
At home it was warm.
Gary took off his shoes in the hallway without letting go of the cat. Then he set him on the floor, carefully, as you set down something fragile. The cat immediately lowered his nose to the floor and walked along the wall. Slowly, with pauses. He sniffed the skirting board, the corner, the leg of the side table. Checking.
Gary stood and watched.
Tom reached the kitchen. He paused at the threshold, twitched an ear. Then he went in. Gary followed.
The bowl was by the radiator, where it had always been. Empty, clean, a little dusty on the edge. The cat walked up to it, sniffed. Stood over it for a second. Then he moved away and sat by the radiator, leaning his flank against the warm metal.
Gary opened the fridge. Inside there was some cooked chicken. He tore off a piece and put it in the bowl. His hands did not obey immediately; his fingers were still stiff from the cold.
Tom ate slowly. Not greedily, the way hungry animals eat, but cautiously. Gary sat beside him on the floor, back against the wall. Watched.
Later, Tom went around the whole flat. He checked every corner, every room, every windowsill. Then he came back to the living room, jumped onto the sofa, and curled up where he had always slept before. To the left of the cushion, by the armrest.
Gary did not take his eyes off him.
Five months he had searched, frozen by lampposts, driven to strangers’ calls, walked with a torch between garages. And Tom had been in the basement under the first entrance. Twenty metres from the door. What had he eaten there? Probably mice. How long would he have lasted if, by sheer chance, Gary had not heard that quiet mew?
Gary could have thought about that for a long time. But he did not.
He turned off the hall light, went into the living room, and sat on the sofa next to the cat. Tom opened one eye, looked at him, and closed it again. Outside the window it was growing dark.
Everyone was home.
