The neighborhood cat. No one knew its real name, or maybe everyone did, and no one agreed. White stripes cut under its throat and around its face, a priest’s collar against its dark coat.
It watched the world with green eyes, deep-set and knowing like the gaze of Buddha who had seen enough to understand, but not enough to stop watching.
It sat in its usual place, just where the sidewalk dipped unevenly toward the road. It had been here long before the rush of cars, before the fences carved the yards into pieces, before “For Sale” signs replaced the names of families that had once known each other.
The mini semi sat heavy on its tires, its steel ribs wrapped in a mural that pulsed with color. Swirls of curiosity, courage, honesty – words painted in thick, looping strokes, in the layering of deep blues, golden yellows, and a striking splash of red. The work of Dusk Cutty, known for his bubble-like patterns that seemed to breathe against the truck’s body.
The truck belonged to Nine Mile, the Montford Avenue restaurant, where the scent of jerk spices curled through the crisp air, a defiant warmth against the early dusk. It had been here long before the sidewalks filled with people who walked fast but never seemed to linger.
A pair of women strolled past, their conversation swallowed by the noise of a street that once belonged to them but now groaned under the weight of traffic. A speed limit sign stood bent at its post, barely glanced at by the cars that rushed past.
Across the street, the black cat lingered near the corner where the road curved toward the main avenue. It had watched the shifting of hands, the slow erosion of community under the steady dip of rising costs and new developments.
Some called it change. Some called it loss.
The cat did not call it anything at all.
Its green eyes reflected the slow churn of the neighborhood, where white pines and magnolias whispered in a language only the wind could understand.
The cat had seen this road long before the cars rushed through it. When the sidewalks were just for neighbors and rent signs weren’t plastered to every other fence post.
First a quaint neighborhood, then a cut-through road, and now a main artery where cars no longer slowed for pedestrians.
The cat did not mind; it never rushed anywhere.
A man moved past the truck, his long, curly dark hair shifting with the wind. His Carhartt pants hung loose, softened by years of wear, the hems kissing the edges of his Birkenstocks. A sheer cloth mask, the kind hikers and city wanderers used to keep the air clean in their lungs, buffed against his face as he walked with the stride of someone who belonged to the street.
The man was one of the many who passed by, leaving nothing behind except the sound of their footsteps fading.
The cat watched his stride, unbothered. He, too, belonged to the street and moved with the ease of someone who had a choice in where to be.
He could leave. He could stay. The street did not weigh on him the way it did on others.
The sidewalk beneath him cracked and buckled under time. It was uneven, pockmarked with pebbles, dulled to a dingy hue. It had been repaved in sections over the years, but never all at once.
Just like the houses on the street, some with fresh coats of paint, others sagging at the seams. Some with manicured lawns, others with overgrown yards that clung stubbornly to the past.
The “neighborhood cat”, as some called it, watched an old woman step out of the bodega, her toy poodle trotting at her side. It saw the father pedaling past with his daughter tucked onto the back seat of his bike, her feet swinging freely while cars squeezed too close beside them.
And still, the cat sat.
Some would call it stillness. Others would mistake it for indifference.
But the cat was neither still nor uncaring. It was present.
The hiker, the man in Carhartts and Birkenstocks, paused near the cat. He crouched, and extended his fingers. An offering. The black cat held his gaze, unblinking. The man was moving, searching, restless. The cat was still, watching, knowing. After a moment, it rubbed its face against his knuckles.
Satisfied, it walked on. Slow, deliberate, twelve sidewalk blocks down from where it had started.
Because people came and went.
Fences rose and rent climbed.
Trees split and speed limits were ignored.
But there would always be a patch of concrete, a place to rest, a moment of stillness in a rushing world.
The black cat knows this.
It had seen it all before.