Читать книгу The Man Who Loved Cats - Priscila Uppal - Страница 6

“The whole of her feline face was striving towards a universal language, towards a word forgotten by men.” — Colette

The Man Who Loved Cats had three beautiful daughters, each one lovelier than the next in his imagination, who lived in three different cities and sent letters and postcards dated meticulously and economically in tiny white envelopes. He would slice open the letters while lounging in his reading chair situated beside three arm’s-length scratching posts and a bed of fresh catnip. The cats purred loquaciously, butting their foreheads into the catnip and against the chair legs as he read, no matter what news was afoot. He read out loud, and sometimes one of the cats, the tabby orange-tailed short-hair named Tug in particular, would jump into his lap and press his paws like rubber stamps against the papers. On Tuesday the fifteenth of June, he told Tug and the others: My daughters are coming to visit me. It seems I am going to die. Tug batted the length of the paper and the nine cat noses surreptitiously buried in the catnip forged a wedge. A ball of twine beside the hole sat stationary as a stone.