I went out for a smoke —
designated zone, past the edge of the lot,
where sin is sanctioned, but not quite embraced.
And she followed.
Padding silent and striped,
crying between cracked pavement and weeds,
a chorus only I could seem to hear.

I spoke her tongue in broken clicks,
offered the stage of my lap like a velvet throne.
She took it.
Grime on her fur, weather etched in the knots.
Not pet-store plush. Not Stoney.
She wore the street like a second skin
and let me stroke the truth of it.

A man wandered past —
she fled.
Cried her practiced cry.
I watched her pivot:
a charlatan with claws retracted,
an actor with a one-line script:
"Feed me. Touch me. Prove you see me."

And I saw myself,
another feral thing with a soft underbelly,
crying just right
at just the right time
hoping someone might pay the toll
to feel needed.

Then, the punchline —
I'd left my key inside the room.
Three visits to the boy at the desk,
each more tragic than the last:
"Cat food?"
"Disposable bowl?"
"Locked out — again."

And what if this is the game?
What if survival is simply knowing
when to purr and when to bolt?
What if this is the love I know how to earn —
transient, scrappy,
earned in cigarettes and silence,
lost between door frames and secondhand smoke?

She cried again in the distance.
I didn’t follow.
Tonight I let the trap remain unsprung.