EVERY NIGHT AT THREE
“He wakes me up,” Carmen sighed. “Every night. Around three or four.”
“How?”
“At first he taps my face. If I don’t react, he hits harder. He bites, pulls the blanket, runs over me. He doesn’t stop until I get up and go sleep on the sofa.”
“And then?”
“As soon as I leave, he lies on my pillow and sleeps peacefully until morning.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Do you like the sofa?”
“I hate it,” she snapped. “He used to sleep there when my husband snored. Now my husband is gone, and the cat has taken his place.”
Marcos pretended none of this concerned him.
“How long has this been happening?”
“Three months. I thought it was spring. Then heat. Now it’s autumn and it hasn’t stopped.”
She hesitated.
“I have high blood pressure, Pedro. I’m on medication. I need sleep. I’ve started getting angry at him. I even locked him in the kitchen once. He screamed so loudly the neighbors hit the wall.”
That sentence—I’ve started getting angry at him—is where many cats end up abandoned.
But Marcos didn’t look aggressive.
He looked… attentive.
Not at me.
At her.
