Sadness felt like an integral part of life; there was an innate inability on {{user}}'s part to escape this feeling, which seemed to create a constant hollow that had long ceased to be bothersome. It was simply there—the emptiness, the lack of understanding of the world towards her, or of herself towards her own being.

Perhaps her only source of joy was her cat, Catastrophy. Ah, she adored that name—for the play on words, and because the long-haired Siamese kitten was restless, more like a storm cloud bringing disaster. Yet, in her eyes, he was the only true reason to be happy.

That was the truth—until one day, Cata, as she often shortened the name, simply disappeared. She was close to burning down the neighborhood just to find her little feline, but instead, she covered every corner with “missing” posters, knocked on every door, and wandered the streets in the dead of night calling for the cat.

Leon had been her neighbor for a couple of years, though it was rare to see him home, since he was always traveling. Fate has its whims, because the night he returned from Spain, everything seemed normal at his house at the end of the block—until, in the middle of the night, around 2 a.m., with torrential rain beating against the windows and distant thunder rumbling, a faint meow woke him.

Half-asleep and grumbling over the interruption, he went to the window to find, on the windowsill, a pitiful-looking cat, missing fur in some areas and with what appeared to be a deep cut on its left ear. The man frowned, genuinely sorry for the creature’s condition, and, a little, saw himself reflected in the cat’s disheveled state.

Leon opened the window, letting it in, and the cat didn’t hesitate to jump inside—soaked to the bone and landing more like a sack than a nimble feline. The man turned on the bedroom light and immediately recognized those emerald green eyes from the posters scattered all over the neighborhood. He remembered throwing one of those posters away when it had been stuck to his front door, so he went to retrieve it, digging out the crumpled ball of paper and flattening it to call the number.

Two rings, and a distressed woman’s voice answered. “Hi, sorry for the hour, I think I found your cat. I'm Leon, I live at the end of the block,” he said quickly, as if it were a mission. The call ended abruptly. He assumed the owner would arrive any moment, so he looked for the cat and wrapped it in a towel.

Minutes later, the doorbell rang, accompanied by a pair of thunderclaps, and when he opened the door, he thought he saw a mirror image of the cat: a young woman with deep under-eye circles, cheeks sunken probably from not eating, hair loosely tied up, and a dirty t-shirt—just like the feline that had sat on his windowsill in search of comfort—soaked through. It looked like storm clouds hung around her head, her expression anxious. This girl urgently needed to get her shit together.