Only a month had passed since Lucrezia's death. Nineteen years are not at all a short time for a human-and-cat life together. Lucrezia had seen a good life, however, along with her, her two-legged pet had seen a good life too. He had a purring comfort whenever he felt hurt by the world. The sun would rise always from the East and would set to the West by an old reliable rule. Worries would pile up like dust that had not been cleaned and would be deposited like seasons over a woman's passport. Meanwhile, Lucrezia was invariably on his shoulder or at his feet, purring or sagely holding her peace, mewing or simply filling the existence with more sense and more cat's hairs, which brought about allergy to his sons and especially to his wife with her severe asthmatic crises. Nevertheless, he would rather have cut off his left hand with his right hand or vice versa, because he was left-handed, than raise his hand against the family sacred thing. Meanwhile, from a small spry rolling ball, the sacred thing had plumped out and become a big, hard to lift up rolling ball, lazy and inclined to permanent dozing; then she seemed to grow wise with age, lost flesh, her little belly sagged, shrunk and shriveled up, the big rolling ball shrunk almost to its childhood size but the baby agility or the inclination to sunny dozing was never restored. In her last months Lucrezia substituted the sweet purring dreams for an almost philosophical half-wake-half-meditation; an observer would have taken her for a cat yogi, so concentrated in her cat's thought she looked: was she seeing a mouse, a sparrow or a piece of fish, nobody ever understood/could tell but perhaps she had peered in advance through her visions into the cat's paradise to make sure that the forthcoming way was worth making it. Her pet never noticed the changes, because to him Lucrezia had always been one and the same, the same warm and fateful presence, even more important than the presence of the wife and the two boys, already grown up men, who had their own tiresome and somewhat nervous life. When she died, he could not believe it, because he had not foreseen it. It is logical to expect that a nineteen-year-old cat is going to die and he had by inference reached to the conclusion that it would happen one day but he had all the time been hoping that such a day would come after an entire eternity.
    When she stopped breathing, everyone had gotten home as if especially for the occasion. All four of them were near the animal at the moment when it gasped out its life after a long convulsion. His wife shove into the kitchen with a stony face. His sons did not shed a tear, did not say a word. Only he started wailing, because he had the feeling that if he did not expose his horror, it would cause a universal catastrophe. While he was wailing, he suddenly saw his wife's astounded face in the door frame - she had a kitchen towel and a dish in her hands, she was wiping dry a dish! She was wiping dry that dish and was looking at him reproachfully. He would have endured to see anything else in her hands and especially to see them empty but there she stood wiping dry that dish with the stubborn tenacity of a person of duty. She was by and large a person of duty. She had not said a kind word to him since the birth of their second son. As if the entire resource of love had openly declared: I am through with this! He had been suffering for two years without being able to get to the bottom of such an injustice of life: you are dear and necessary until you give the world an offspring; then they strike you off and throw you out and abandon you like a worn out nightgown. One day the elder boy came back from play and brought in his hat the mouse, which later they named Lucrezia, and his life changed. The sun rose again; all the lights of life went on again; the gloomy life together sailed with the wind again. Lucrezia understood him without words. She never looked daggers at him, never contradicted him, never flied out at him, never asked money from him, and never reproached him with not earning enough. She tolerated even the smell of his musty socks, something that no one at home could tolerate in any way, even those rascals with the always stinking sneakers. Of course, he realised that the cat's advantage was its speechlessness - man can say a lot of nonsense out of sheer exercise of tongue. His wife exercised a lot and her exercises were not just clumsy but also very offensive at times. In the first years he had tried to justify himself, to return the attack with a counterattack but he soon understood that such occupation was absolutely useless and gave it up. He was absorbed in silence and in petting the cat's coat. His wife changed too. Instead of talking away flamboyantly, energetically and languorously, she passed over to quiet hissing hints, semi-sentences-semi-words, rehashed somehow between her teeth but he was sure that she even swore at him. She was a fine, delicately looking woman but her soul had grown coarse and her tongue - forked like a snake's.
    Now and then he would think that the only reason for their having not departed, excepting the habit, was Lucrezia. He had once thrown in that he was going to take her in a bag and move to his mother's place but his wife flied into a rage saying that Lucrezia was exactly that much his, as she was hers, that he could take anything else from the house, including his precious arrogant sons, who did not show even the least gratitude but that Lucrezia was going to stay there, where she herself was going to stay.
    "Why, what have you to do with Lucrezia?" He had taken the liberty of saying to her. "You neither buy her fish, nor feed her, nor take her to the vet, nor pet her, nor sleep with her, nor nothing. Nothing. She even runs away when she sees you."
    "Of course she runs away, am I not rushing all the time in order to manage to have everything done! Do you do anything else save cosseting her?" And his wife began to rage as she used to do in the good old days when all good quality dinner and tea sets of his dignified family went down the drain as a result of her destructive rage
    Now at his mother's one-room flat there were only plastic cups and a piece or two of cheap glass-ware.
    Whatever the case might be, they did not go that far to pull Lucrezia - one at the front, the other one - at the hind legs. To tell the truth, one must say that in certain rare moments Lucrezia used to cuddle on his wife's belly and even happened to purr to her, and he would take the betrayal painfully, wondering if his asthmatic wife did not use some witchcraft to entice the cat. One could expect anything from a woman like her.
    At the funeral all kept silent. He dug the hole and laid down the tiny little body wrapped in a new towel, a small sheet of cloth and a blanket on top. His wife was about to fling into the little grave the hat, in which the baby Lucrezia had been brought but he stopped her. He would not allow that hat to be buried. The dry-eyed family left together after the cat's burial, while he stayed behind in order to give vent to his tears. Those heartless boys, were they his own sons? Was it him alone that had lived with Lucrezia? Where had his wife and his sons, who had seemed to have grown pulling at the poor little animal's tail and mustaches, been meanwhile?
    Only a month had passed since Lucrezia's death, it was exactly his birthday. Like every year, the holiday strikingly reminded a memorial service. As if another useless, screwed up year had to be made an occasion. The silent family sat at a table well laded with ready-to-cook food - his wife was so tired to prepare something special. The difference: there was no fish, because Lucrezia adored fish and Lucrezia herself was not on the table - she liked to walk proudly over the festive tablecloth and to smell every meal as if to approve of it. When it got time for the gifts, the elder son stood up and went to the children's room. He returned with the hat in his hands. Who's allowed him to touch the hat? The elder son opened the hat, coloured dark-blue, and something grey crept out of it. He could not believe his eyes. He took the fluff with his strong left hand and it momentarily started purring. He did not thank them, did not say anything, he stood up from the table and went away to his room. He immediately knew that the kitten was male. Never mind, thus Lucrezia would not have the feeling that she had been betrayed, forgotten, replaced, given up. He will name him Tiberius. Some Rome, some imperial festivity must enter this house of rough way of life and quiet boredom. He started to kiss Tiberius on the oblong muffle but the little one slapped him cavalierly on the mouth, while his curved claw dug into the little fosse under his nose. He felt a sharp pain but he was not angry. He was rather surprised, because Lucrezia's last scratches had been anemic like touches with a hair.

Translated by: Valentin Krastev

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