My cat is singing Shehecheyanu on the porch steps in her tinny little voice. Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech ha’olam, shehecheyanu, v’kiy’manu, v’higiyanu, laz’man hazeh.
The sky is an unnatural green color and the trees around our small house struggle against the wind. A carrion stench is heavy in the air; whether its source is nearby or carried from far away by the wind, I can’t tell.
“What do we have to be thankful for?” I ask as I sit down next to her. Her fur is full and white; it stands out stark against the inky green sky, somehow still pristine in spite of debris churned up by the wind. Her eyes are mismatched — one golden, one ice blue. When she stares into my eyes it feels like she stares into my soul.
“We are here,” she says. Her voice is clear as if we’re in a quiet room and not in the midst of this din. I realize I can’t feel the wind on my face anymore.
“Here?” I gesture at the sky, which now looks like an oil spill when the sun shines directly on it: purples and blues twining through the green black. Something enormous shifts behind the clouds, but my mind won’t let me linger on it.
She looks in the direction indicated by my hand, cocks her head to the side for a long while, as if considering, then turns back to me and says, “We are still here.”
“There are better prayers for that,” I say, although I can’t think of any. I sing the last part of the prayer into the silent wind, “Shehecheyanu, v’kiy’manu, v’higiyanu, laz’man hazeh.” Who has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to this season, I translate in my head. It sounds more like a question than a blessing. How does one thank the Eternal for bringing them into interesting times like these?
We didn’t get here, to this small porch attached to this small house, on our own. Strangers with nothing to lose chose kindness, sheltering us from storms and angry mobs as we fled into the mountains. Somewhere along the way my cat — hidden in my backpack between clothes and energy bars — had started to speak.
“Let me out. I know the way,” she had said.
“The way to where?” I had asked.
“I know the way.”
As green tendrils bled across the sky and the wind kicked up the smell of death all around us, a talking cat had seemed the least strange thing happening. The mobs had called my cat harbinger and run us out of every town we limped into.
So I followed my cat to this small house. She ran across the forest floor without a sound. No leaves rustled, no sticks snapped under her paws. Her untouched white fur gleamed among the trees so that I never lost sight of her as we ran.
We survived this long but I know we won’t live for much longer. Whatever it is that shifts behind the clouds is closer to breaking through. I look at my cat; her mismatched eyes are alight, her whiskers are pressed forward.
She is smiling at the sky.