The Cat with Two Front Doors

The cat arrived with a key that opened nothing. It hung from his collar, a tiny brass ornament shaped like the sort of thing that ought to open a doll’s house. Beneath it was a telephone number. Ruth read the number while he stood on her kitchen worktop, eating a piece of chicken he had acquired without negotiation.

She had lived in the flat for six days. The estate agent mentioned good light, useful storage and a quiet street. Nobody mentioned a ginger cat who knew how to push the loose kitchen window with his forehead.

She called the number. A man answered, breathless.

“Has he got a white back foot?”

“Two. Unless one is a disguise.”

“That’s Merlin. Where are you?”

She gave the address. The man groaned with the particular shame of somebody recognising a problem he had promised was solved. He said he would come immediately. Ruth put the chicken away and watched Merlin examine the empty plate with disappointment.

His owner arrived carrying a basket and wearing a coat with one sleeve turned partly inside out. His name was Adam. He lived three streets away, had moved recently and had spent the morning looking beneath parked cars. He apologised before entering and again after seeing the worktop.

“He used to live here,” he explained. “With my aunt. I’ve taken him because she’s moved somewhere he can’t go.”

Ruth looked at Merlin. “You didn’t tell me you had prior rights.”

Adam smiled. He was perhaps forty, with a serious face that changed considerably when amused. Ruth was thirty-seven and had recently ended a relationship in which somebody else’s amusement always seemed to require her to become smaller. She noticed the difference before she meant to notice anything about him.

Merlin entered the basket only after everybody abandoned the attempt to persuade him. Adam thanked her, offered to replace the chicken and asked whether she could keep the window secure while he settled the cat at home. She said of course. He left looking grateful enough to make an ordinary favour feel rather grand.

The next morning Merlin was outside the glass, offended by the obstruction. Ruth sent Adam a photograph. He replied with a picture of the basket he had apparently escaped before breakfast and the words, Negotiations continue. She laughed in the office and had to explain herself to a colleague who disliked cats but enjoyed any evidence of other people’s domestic disorder.

Adam came after work to collect him from the sheltered doorstep where Ruth had left water. This time he brought chicken, properly packaged, and a small bag of biscuits for her. She asked whether his aunt missed the cat. Adam said very much, though she pretended not to because she hated feeling she had made his life difficult.

“Where did the key come from?” Ruth asked.

“She put it on him years ago. Said if he insisted on treating the place like a hotel, he should carry a room key.”

Ruth laughed. Adam looked pleased, then at the window. “I’ll pay for a proper catch if that one needs fixing. He shouldn’t be making your move harder.”

She said she had already reported the loose catch through the right contact and it would be repaired. He nodded. He did not insist on becoming responsible for her flat because his cat had mistaken it for home.

For a week their acquaintance consisted of photographs and practical messages. Merlin stayed at Adam’s more successfully as the household routine settled. Ruth saw him less. She found herself disappointed when her phone contained only work messages and a reminder about an electricity reading.

Then Adam asked whether she would come for tea, so that the person whose chicken Merlin stole could see where he was meant to live. She said yes. She spent twenty minutes choosing a jumper for an invitation ostensibly issued by a cat.

Adam’s house was narrow, bright and still half unpacked. A blue bowl stood beside the kitchen door. Merlin slept on the best chair with the loose confidence of an animal who had never understood why moving required anybody else’s opinion. Ruth sat on the second-best chair and accepted tea.

Adam repaired musical instruments, mostly ordinary school things that returned with extraordinary problems. He told her about finding a small toy inside a case where its owner insisted there had never been room for one. Ruth managed training schedules for a food wholesaler. She told him about arranging a safety course for people who kept sending their confirmations to the wrong address.

They talked for two hours. She liked his concentration and the way he admitted when a story required too much background. He liked her dry jokes, the small precise movements she made while explaining something and her willingness to say she had never heard of a thing rather than nodding politely.

He asked whether the new flat was beginning to feel like hers. She said the rooms were, but the days still felt borrowed. After years of arranging evenings around another person’s preferences, she kept forgetting to choose anything when nobody asked. Adam said he understood the gap between enjoying solitude and knowing what to do with it. He had lived alone for three years and still bought too much bread. She asked what he did with the extra. He admitted he mostly froze it, then forgot. The conversation made both of them laugh without requiring either to describe being alone as a problem the other might solve.

When she left, Merlin followed them to the door, considered accompanying her and returned to the chair instead. Adam watched him go.

“Apparently you can visit without taking him home.”

“A disappointing change in my status.”

He hesitated. “Would you like to visit without him being the reason?”

She felt herself smile. “Yes.”

Their first dinner was on a Friday. Adam made a sauce too slowly and Ruth helped chop things because she wanted to, not because he stood waiting for instruction. They ate late, listened to music and kissed in the kitchen while Merlin knocked a pen beneath the refrigerator. Neither retrieved it immediately.

Over the following month they saw each other often enough for ordinary habits to become visible. Adam forgot food in the oven when a conversation interested him. Ruth answered messages too quickly, sometimes before deciding what she actually wanted to say. He kept books in strange categories. She folded shopping bags so neatly that he assumed it must be satisfying. It was, she admitted, though she had never expected anybody to ask.

Then his aunt came to visit. Her name was Pauline. She had the same clear eyes and a manner that made offers sound like decisions. Ruth met her in Adam’s kitchen and instantly understood the small brass key.

Pauline liked Ruth. She said so directly. She also said Adam was a wonderful man who needed someone to make certain he ate properly, and wasn’t it lovely that Ruth lived nearby. The sentence was affectionate, old-fashioned and capable of making Ruth’s shoulders tighten before she finished swallowing her tea.

Adam laughed uncertainly. Ruth changed the subject. Pauline left pleased with the afternoon. Ruth left quieter than she had arrived.

That evening Adam called. He asked whether his aunt had upset her. Ruth said she liked Pauline and did not want to apply for a position supervising his meals. He went silent, then said he hadn’t meant to agree with the remark. He had been trying not to embarrass his aunt.

“I know,” Ruth said. “I don’t need an argument on my behalf. I just don’t want the joke becoming the arrangement.”

He understood more readily than she expected. He said he could cook, could feed himself badly if he chose and was inviting her because he enjoyed her company. Then he asked whether she still wanted to go to the coast on Sunday. She did. The conversation ended before it became a trial of either his family or her previous relationship.

Sunday began with Merlin missing. Adam called while Ruth was tying her shoes. The cat was not in the house, not in the garden and not at her flat. They cancelled nothing immediately, but the hour passed. Adam checked the places he knew. Ruth walked the route between the two homes, carrying the old basket because it was something useful to hold.

She found no cat. She found a neighbour who recognised him, a man who thought every ginger cat was the same one and a child who offered to draw a poster before understanding that the search had only just begun. By noon Ruth was cold and Adam looked frightened in a way that made the planned day out seem very far away.

They sat in her kitchen to think. She asked where Merlin liked to sleep at Pauline’s, before the move. Adam mentioned the sunny bedroom, the kitchen chair and a cupboard beneath the stairs. Ruth stood up.

The cupboard was not quite beneath the stairs, but built into the wall beside them. She used it for boxes and had left it open while sorting things that morning. When she shut it, she had assumed the small thump was a box shifting.

Merlin emerged slowly, blinking at the light. He had found a folded blanket behind a bag and apparently considered the morning well spent. Ruth sat on the floor laughing with relief. Adam leaned against the wall, one hand over his face.

“I locked your cat in a cupboard.”

“He entered your cupboard without a reservation.”

They laughed until she began crying a little, embarrassed by the sudden force of feeling. Adam sat beside her. He did not tell her not to cry. Merlin stepped over both of them and went to inspect the kitchen.

They never reached the coast. They bought lunch nearby and ate at Ruth’s table, with the cat confined to Adam’s company until they went home together. The day was less romantic than she imagined and more revealing. They could be worried, inconvenienced and foolish in the same room without making each other the cause.

In June Pauline invited them both to lunch. She asked Adam to bring food because her own kitchen was small. He cooked. Ruth brought flowers. Nobody suggested she should check whether he remembered the vegetables. Pauline admired them when they arrived and told Ruth about a choir she had joined.

On the way home Adam asked whether Ruth wanted to stay for supper. She said she wanted an evening in her own flat, sorting the final box. He looked disappointed for a moment, then said he would see her Wednesday. She kissed him before leaving, grateful that a small separate plan could remain small.

The last box contained a photograph from the beginning of her old relationship. She looked at it without trying to decide whether those people had been happy enough to justify the years afterwards. Then she put it away and hung a print she liked on the newly clear wall.

On Wednesday Adam arrived carrying bread and a book he thought she might enjoy. Merlin remained at home, asleep. The little brass key was still on his collar, opening nothing, while the kitchen window in Ruth’s flat now closed properly. She let Adam in through the front door and asked whether he wanted tea before they decided what to cook.