The agency didn’t refuse my request to be paid more for my crosswords. Instead, they said they no longer required my services. According to their fax, they looked at the numbers and realized it wasn’t working out for them, even at the normal rate. So I am unemployed. I don’t know what worries me more, the fact of not having a job or the way people around here have started looking at me. Somehow or other, through a comment here, a gesture there, they make me feel like I’ve done something wrong. Like I’ve become suspicious.

December 31

I have a sneaking suspicion that the cat was to blame for the dog nearly losing an eye. After that initial sighting in the empty lot next door, I spotted the cat again a few days later, when by some strange twist of fate I’d woken up very early. I first noticed him from the bedroom window: he was at the far end of the garden, a little white smudge among the plants by the hedge. I looked more closely and saw it was him, and was surprised that he’d ventured onto the dog’s turf. When I let the dog out, the cat, instead of running away, left at a leisurely pace through a small gap between some sheets of metal and the ground. With time, the cat grew bolder, and his appearances became more regular. One day Alicia came across him, and being a cat lover she wasted no time in offering him some milk in a little cup with no handle. The cat came over and lapped it up.

As he became more sure of himself, he started making demands: a cup of milk was no longer enough, and he used to sit under the kitchen window or by the wooden door with the mosquito panels, meowing and meowing. The dog put up with the cat’s presence for the most part, even showing him a certain cautious respect, but the trouble began when the dog realized the cat was also being fed meat. At mealtimes, the dog would find the courage to charge at the cat, chasing him away and stealing his food. I soon learned to feed them separately, the cat in the back garden and the dog in the courtyard, where his kennel is and where he spends the night. But later, when he was back outside, the dog would sniff his way frenziedly, obsessively around the places where the cat had been eating, bustling along like a jealous detective and seeming almost enraged by the whole business.

The dog then took to picking his food up in his mouth and carrying it to the empty lot next door, ostensibly so he could eat in peace. This had me fooled until I realized that sometimes he’d then abandon his food and go and hide in the long grass, keeping watch through the wire fence to see whether I was feeding the cat. If I was, he’d come crashing through the hole in the fence like an omen and tear toward the cat at a furious gallop.