Walks measured in cats

A city’s space is usually defined by its buildings, parks and squares. But there are other ways of measurin

g it too. Walks can be measured in distance, but also in cats. Cats are like pins on a city map, and I navigate my way between them. I no longer say that I’m going for a walk somewhere in particular. Instead, I’ll say: I’m going to wander around the black and white Liberties cat. Or those two fluffy ones on the street parallel to mine. To be absolutely honest, I don’t always remember the name of a street, but I always remember a cat in a particular window.

Sometimes, though, even those seemingly fixed points on the map change. Like when the cat from the row of houses opposite mine disappeared. I pass that spot almost every day and still can’t get used to his absence. I wonder what happened to him, hoping that he simply moved away with his family and now occupies a different window somewhere else in the city.

I know that hope is probably an illusion, but I hold on to it. Just like I hold on to so many things in life that remain uncertain.

Because although I measure my local world from cat to cat, there is one pin missing from my personal map of Dublin.The most important one.

The one whose little patch of the world overlapped with mine for so many years. Maybe that’s why I keep looking for cats.