Dreams of an Old Cat
Meg Pokrass
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Waiting for the vet to arrive with his needle, the doorbell startles early. Swallowing a lump, I open the door to a rumpled middle-aged man. “Come in and sit down. I’ll put the kettle on.” “Sure. Thank you,” he says awkwardly. On the sofa, the blind cat is blissfully sleeping, her skinny bones poking through fur. He half-smiles and sits down near the cat. I bring him a cup of tea and I settle in, watching the two of them. I want to explain how much the cat has meant to me, how she’s the real reason to wake up and get dressed. “She has no interest in eating, gets lost and confused at the end of the hallway, doesn’t know who I am,” I say. My heart feels like a squeezed-out kitchen sponge. The vet is staring at me pitifully, as if I’m the cat. Before he does anything else, I say, “If this was your companion, what would you do?” “Do?” he says. “I’m here to pick up your ten-dollar chair on Craig’s List. We spoke on the phone a few hours ago. Remember?” “Oh,” I say. “I was afraid you were Dr. Death.” Asleep between us, the blind cat is dreaming, envisioning critters she used to be able to see.
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Meg Pokrass’s pets lounging about.
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Meg Pokrass has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including New England Review, Wigleaf, Electric Literature, Five Points, Plume, RATTLE, The Best Small Fictions 2025, and Flash Fiction America (W.W. Norton, 2023). She has published 10 books of fiction and prose poetry. Her newest full collection, First Law of Holes: New and Selected Stories, is from Dzanc Books. Meg currently lives in the Scottish Highlands, where she judges The Edinburgh Award for Flash Fiction, and serves as Founding/Managing Editor of Best Microfiction.
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Posted in Third Annual Pet Writing Contest and tagged in #boudin, #fiction, #flashfiction, #microfiction, Fiction