The coffee was almost ready when I happened to glance out the kitchen window and noticed Mrs. Jenkins standing in hers.
Now, that wasn’t unusual. Mrs. Jenkins has always treated the front window as though it were a front-row seat to whatever the neighborhood happened to be doing. If someone walked a dog, she saw it. If a package was delivered, she knew who it belonged to before the driver made it back to the truck. She wasn’t what I’d call nosy. Nosy implies effort. Mrs. Jenkins simply possessed an extraordinary awareness of other people’s business.
What caught my attention wasn’t that she was looking outside. It was that she appeared to be looking directly into our apartment.
I turned around.
John Mercer wasn’t doing anything suspicious. He was sitting on the couch with a controller in his hands, deeply involved in one of those games where everything seems to explode every thirty seconds. Every now and then he’d mutter something under his breath or celebrate a narrow escape as though he’d personally prevented an international incident. It was louder than reading a book, certainly, but hardly the sort of thing that usually caused neighborhood unrest.
“John,” I called.
“Hm?”
“Have you been yelling a lot lately?”
He paused his game just long enough to think about it.
“I’ve been enthusiastic.”
“That’s not really an answer.”
“It’s the answer I’m giving.”
Fair enough.
I poured my coffee and wandered back toward the window. Mrs. Jenkins hadn’t moved. She was still watching with an expression that suggested she was trying to solve a puzzle only she could see. Naturally, my mind started searching for explanations. Maybe John really had been louder than either of us realized. Maybe we’d been letting the front door slam. Maybe one of us had left the trash bins out too long. Once you start looking for reasons someone might be irritated with you, your brain becomes remarkably creative.
Then I noticed Mr. Whiskers.
John’s orange tabby was stretched across the windowsill in a patch of warm sunlight, completely and utterly motionless. I’d seen sleeping cats before, but this was something else. He looked less like a living animal and more like a decorative piece someone had purchased from an expensive home décor store. If he’d had a little price tag hanging from one ear, I don’t think it would have looked out of place.
I watched him for nearly a minute.
Nothing.
No tail twitch.
No ear flick.
Not even the lazy blink cats usually offer as proof they’re still participating in reality.
“You know,” I said, “your cat hasn’t moved.”
John glanced over without the slightest concern.
“He’s asleep.”
“I’ve seen sleeping.”
“So?”
“This is advanced sleeping.”
John shrugged. “He’s very committed.”
That explanation somehow felt less convincing than it was probably meant to.
Mrs. Jenkins was still watching.
That’s when it finally occurred to me that I’d been asking the wrong question all along. I’d assumed she was looking at us because of something we’d done. Too much noise. Too much excitement. Too much anything. But what if she wasn’t watching us at all?
What if she was trying to figure out whether Mr. Whiskers was real?
From her apartment, with the sunlight catching his fur just right, I could easily imagine him looking like one of those ceramic cats people put on a windowsill because they think it makes the room feel cozy. The longer I looked, the more I understood her uncertainty. Honestly, I was beginning to have a few doubts myself.
I slid the window open.
“Morning, Mrs. Jenkins.”
She smiled immediately.
“Oh, good,” she said. “I was wondering how long that cat could possibly stay that still.”
Almost as if he’d been waiting for his cue, Mr. Whiskers opened one eye, produced an enormous yawn, stretched each paw with exaggerated precision, and settled right back into exactly the same position he’d occupied before.
Mrs. Jenkins laughed.
“I knew he had to be real.”
“So did I,” I said.
There was a brief pause.
“Although,” I admitted, “I was starting to lose confidence.”
She laughed again, wished me a good morning, and disappeared behind her curtains.
I closed the window and looked over at Mr. Whiskers, who had already resumed his career as an extremely convincing household ornament. John, meanwhile, had unpaused his game without ever questioning why I’d spent the better part of ten minutes investigating a sleeping cat.
The funny thing is, I’d been absolutely convinced the whole mystery was about the noise.
Turns out it was never about the noise.
It was about the world’s most convincing ceramic cat.