And that was all, that’s how we left New York. Nobody to wave to, no tears—no feelings even, exactly. Four in the morning, and it’s all just gone, nothing left to take with you except suitcases.

I’d been on a plane one time before, when Norris was doing something with the San Francisco Opera, but I don’t remember any of the details because I was five years old, maybe six. They gave me a coloring book on the plane, and I loved the food in the little plastic trays. Not a lot of training for flying across the ocean to your wild new life, especially when you have to hand your cat over at the ticket counter like a damn garment bag. I saw other cats and one dog in cages like his, and that helped a little, because I knew at least he’d have some company in the baggage compartment. All the same, when I held the cage up for the last time and looked at him through the mesh, and he stared back at me and let out one single ice-cold miaow, it just went right through me, it was really awful. I said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Sally put her arm on my shoulder, and it was all I could do not to slap it away.

The clerk put the cage on the conveyor belt. It bumped slowly away, with suitcases and packages piling up behind it until I couldn’t see it anymore. The clerk tried to be nice. He said, “Your kitty’ll be fine, honey. They’ll take him off the belt and put him in a special safe place with all the other animals. Everything but the in-flight movie.” He winked at Sally and Evan over my head. I can still see it, that fucking stupid wink.

The only thing I really remember about the flight is taking off, because we flew in a long circle over the city, and I’m still sure I saw old messed-up Eighty-third Street, even though I probably couldn’t have. But I know I saw the Park, I know that much, so for just one second it was all right down there under us—Jake and Marta, and William Jay Gaynor Junior High School, and the crystals-and-auras place on our corner, and the tiny Jamaican market on Amsterdam where Sally used to buy mangoes and papayas, and I’d get my reggae tapes. The woman in the Navy pea jacket, walking up and down Eighty-first all day, jerking her thumb at the cabs, yelling at them, trying to get one of them to stop and take her out of here. The big blind guy with the nose rings, who liked to scare the people having their dinner outside the Columbus Cafe, and the two old men I’ve seen on Broadway all my life, shuffling along arm in arm, yelling at each other. The black woman who runs the newsstand, who saved piano magazines for Sally, and kept telling me how I should do my hair. And the Siamese Hussy, wondering and wondering where Mister Cat could have gone. All down there, my life under our wings.

And after that it was all clouds, all the way to London. Nothing to see, no ocean, no sky, about as romantic as the IRT. I couldn’t sleep, but I wasn’t exactly awake either—I got one of those tiny pillows and crammed it up against the window and leaned my head on it, trying to get halfway comfortable. I tried to let my mind just float off, like it does in class half the time, but it kept seeing Mister Cat in the baggage compartment, lonely and crowded and being jolted around, not knowing what was happening to him, scared for the first time since he was a kitten and those boys were dangling him off the roof. I couldn’t stand to think of Mister Cat being scared, but I couldn’t think about anything else.

Meena says I have to describe landing at Heathrow, but it’s hard to remember what’s really that first miserable gray evening, and what’s from other times we’ve been there. Tunnel after echoey, endless tunnel, and the three of us pushing four luggage carts. Sally nudging me every minute, pointing to the people going through Customs with us, whispering, “Jenny, look at them, those are real monks, from Tibet!” and “Jenny, look, see what that lady’s wearing, that’s called a sari!” Evan helping a tall old black man in red and yellow robes and a red hat like a flowerpot to carry his duffel bag… like I said, things blur. And I didn’t want to look, or notice, or remember anything—not then.

We didn’t have any trouble at Customs, except for having to stand in line forever, and all that time Sally and Evan were waving to Evan’s sons, Tony and Julian, who were waving back from behind a big high window, along with a red-haired woman, Evan’s sister Charlotte, whom they’d been living with while he was gone. Everybody in the world was waving like mad, except me, even when Sally grabbed my arm and pointed up toward the window. I just kept looking somewhere else, all that time.

You can imagine all the hugging and gushing and carrying on when we got out of Customs. I’m not going to write about it, mostly because I still feel bad about the way I was with Sally then. Here she was, just off the plane and meeting an entire new family—stepchildren, sister-in-law, the works, and more coming—and nobody but me from the bride’s side, and I wasn’t about to deal with any of it. I saw a young guy holding up a sign saying GOSHAWK FARM CATTERY, and I was over there like a shot, because it gave me an excuse to duck out on all the at-long-last stuff, and I took it. I’d be different today, but that doesn’t do yesterday any good.

The Goshawk Farm guy’s name was Martin. He’d already picked up Mister Cat, and just needed someone to sign all the blue and yellow forms on his clipboard. So I did that, and then I kneeled down to say good-bye to Mister Cat and tell him I’d be seeing him really soon. And not to forget me.

He was crouched in his cage, scrunched down as far back as he could get. All I could see at first were his eyes, which aren’t green or yellow, like most cats’—they’re a kind of really deep orange, with a few little gold specks in them, too. Now they were glaring at me and he made a sound like a rusty old creaking door. He makes it at strange dogs and children he doesn’t know—Mister Cat really hates most children, which you can’t blame him for. But he never, ever made it at me, no matter how mad he got. I kept trying to say, “It’s me, you dumb old cat, it’s me,” only my throat hurt so much I couldn’t get the words out. And I wasn’t going to cry, either, not right in Heathrow Airport, in front of a stranger in a country I didn’t want to be in. So I just kept kneeling there by the cage.

Then this really funny voice, like a seal barking at the zoo, said over my shoulder, “I say, is that your cat?” I looked around and almost fell over backward, because there stood this small boy wearing a blue school coat, with a sort of Cub Scout cap, and absolutely huge gray eyes in this little pointy-chinned face. It took me a while to figure out why he looked familiar, until it hit me that his face was shaped just almost exactly like Mister Cat’s face.

I knew who he was, of course—God knows I’d seen enough snapshots of him and his brother, and their dog, and their school, and their mother. Julian. Not the dancer, the younger one.

“Yeah, he’s my cat,” I said. “Mess with him, you’ll never pick your nose again,” because Julian was wiggling his fingers through the mesh, trying to get Mister Cat to rub up against them. He pulled them back, but slowly, so I wouldn’t think he was scared. The next thing he said to me was, “I’m a whiz at maths. Are you any good at maths?” They call it that here.

“Actually, I’m terrible,” I said—which is still true—and Julian’s face just lit up. He said, “Oh, splendid, I’ll help you.” I couldn’t get over his deep, froggy voice, sounding like it had broken years before they’re supposed to. He’s always had it, practically since he started talking, I found that out later.

Martin, the Goshawk Farm guy, said politely that he guessed he’d be off with Mister Cat, then; but I was looking past him at Sally and Evan and Charlotte coming toward us, laughing, with their arms around each other—and past them at an older boy who had to be Tony, Julian’s brother. He wasn’t actually handsome, any more than Evan was handsome—his hair was all bushy and messy, and his skin wasn’t even all the way cleared up yet—but you couldn’t not look at him. It’s like that with some people—they don’t just catch your eye, they grab it so it hurts sometimes. I don’t know how it works. I just wish I was one of them.