He turned back to Eloise. “What are you doing here?” he asked the cat, quietly. “I don’t mind that you’re here,” he said quickly, “but I don’t understand why. And why do you disappear sometimes when I look away, but not this time? Is there something you’re trying to tell me?”
As the bus shuddered to a stop at a red light, cars and trucks and mopeds in the other lane zipped past the trees lining the sidewalks. Most were saplings with small leaves just beginning to unfurl, but the bright yellow aspen on the corner stood taller than any of them. It certainly had more cats—three, by his count.
He tripped, and for a moment, he windmilled wildly down the sidewalk, arms flailing, legs trying to part ways with his torso. He looked away, struggled with some success to find his balance again, and slowed to a jog. He looked back up. The bus was still there, but the tree and the cat had vanished.
Today is a distracted sort of day, not only in and of itself, but in the culmination of so many distracted days in the last weeks and months. The world feels uneasy and uncertain…