One-Eyed Cat by Paula Fox

miles away.”
    Ned had been about to tell her that he was scared of the very idea of bears, but now he shut his mouth. He decided he’d better keep certain things to himself.
    Mr. Scully was standing next to the pump looking out the kitchen window. The gray cat was close by the shed, eating from its bowl.
    â€œHe’s getting a little plump,” Mr. Scully noted. “I guess he’s fond of the food I give him.”
    â€œWhere do the wild cats go when it freezes at night?” Ned asked.
    â€œI expect they have all kinds of spots for sleeping, a hole in a tree trunk, or an old chicken coop, or a hollow in the woods. Creatures like that get pretty clever about taking care of themselves. They have to do it every minute, I suppose, and that makes them alert and tough,” Mr. Scully said.
    â€œI wonder where he was born,” Ned said.
    â€œIt might have been to a wild mother. Though he doesn’t seem quite as timid as cats born in the wild. No—I think maybe he was a kitten of someone’s pet, and he ran away or got lost, or else they put him out to fend for himself. People do that, you know.” The old man suddenly leaned forward. “Ned! Look at that! He’s playing!”
    The cat was leaping in the air, chasing a leaf as it spun down from a maple tree.
    â€œHe’s feeling better,” said Mr. Scully.
    Ned stretched over the counter and pressed his face against the window. As he watched the gray cat circle and leap and pounce, he felt light and hopeful; he felt free of an oppressive weight. Then he saw the emptiness of the cat’s left eye which the lid half revealed. He saw the way the cat still shook its head from time to time as though something had crawled inside its ear.
    Mr. Scully had gone to sit at the table. “He sleeps on that old quilt all the time,” he said. The cat was sitting down near its bowl now, cleaning its thin little tail. Ned sat down with Mr. Scully. “I was going to throw the quilt out,” the old man said, “but I’ll leave it. The cat likes it so much. He probably feels it’s his home. Another thing that happens when you get old—you wake up so early in the morning like you were going backwards through the night—and when I’m standing at the window, pumping water for my tea, I can hardly tell whether he’s there or not … gray cat, gray quilt and gray autumn morning. It all seems one grayish haze. Then he lifts up his head and cocks it and stares at the window … looking to see if I’m up. He’s getting to know my habits. Animals learn you, Ned, just as much as you learn them.
    â€œWell, then he stretches front and back, and looks around and yawns and that’s the first bit of color I see, that little pink spot of the inside of his mouth. He jumps down from the icebox and arches his back and runs about for a minute, disappears for maybe five or ten minutes. Pretty soon, when I’m drinking my tea, he turns up, ready for his breakfast. So I put something in his bowl and get my sweater off the hook and go out the back door and put the bowl down where he’s used to it now, by the shed. He’s less timid and lets me get a closer look, a little more every day or so.
    â€œI close the door and come back to the window. He looks up at it, spots me with his good eye, then goes to the bowl and eats his breakfast. I do like to watch him clean himself. He licks a paw and runs it right over that empty socket. It don’t seem to hurt him. After he’s washed about every bit of himself, he struts off to do the day’s business.”
    Mr. Scully’s voice was so lively that Ned was surprised. He hadn’t thought the old man was interested in much except the past, and whether or not he was going to get a letter from Doris.
    â€œIt’s funny how alone an animal can be,” Mr. Scully said in a musing tone, “and still be all right.”
    In the afternoon