In the same position? Or higher up to catch the sunlight?

Or would you like to be where I am now?

Oh, it appears you already are.

Being sociable is exhausting, I find, and it was a relief to find some space for a bit of me time. Or to be more accurate, some cat and me time. She took up her usual position on my lap and I set to work on the new Guardian Bumper Christmas Cryptic Crossword.

It was a promising start: six hours in and I was already two answers to the good. 12 down, symbiosis, which Chambers defines as ‘a mutually beneficial relationship’, and 18 across, catatonic. The latter was an anagram. The clue was ‘Action cat? Not this one.’

Thursday December 27th

I remained on the sofa through the night, so deep was the cat’s sleep. She looked so peaceful that I had no mind to disturb her. The morning hours passed in that way, too, but by mid-afternoon I was in need of food and thought it was about time I moved.

It was as I picked her up that I noticed her stiffness – and that what I had mistaken for a lightness of breath was, in fact, an absence of breath. I placed her gently back on the sofa and stroked her, as the winter sun shone softly down upon her fur.

For she loves the sun and the sun loves her.

Mrs McNulty joined me in the garden as I was digging the hole. From beneath her apron, she handed me a hand-sawn wooden box, shaped like a miniature coffin. It was decorated with a series of elaborately carved runic symbols. The inside was lined with red velvet.

She said she had many more boxes back in her house if this one wasn’t right. But it was perfect.

I laid the cat down inside it. She looked content. She was dreaming of her next life.

The service was a short one. I read a poem:

‘I should like to sleep like a cat,

With all the fur of time . . .’

while Mrs McNulty recited a variety of incantations of her own devising.

‘It’s over now,’ she said.

I shovelled the soil on top and walked back into a house full of emptiness.

Friday December 28th

I Folded Up My Grief

I folded up my Grief,

Laid it gently in a box.

Tied it up with ribbon.

Fixed a sturdy-strong padlock.

In the garden, it was buried

In a hole dug ten feet deep.

But when I went inside,

Grief was still with me.

I confronted it and said –

Grief, I put you in the ground!

Why then are you here with me?

Why follow me around?

Grief said – But I cannot be buried!

For of you I am a part.

You must carry me inside you,

I am chained around your heart.