Wood chips and brown grass decorated the floor at the front of her cage. Dirk saw the huge tree trunk leaning against the far wall for Trudy to climb. And as he pressed his forehead to the bars, he saw the remains of her evening meal; big bones lay crisscross over a dark purple stain in the concrete.

But Trudy wasn’t visible. Not yet.

“Trudy?”

He eyed the big rock in the shadows.

She’s back there, he thought.

He was about to call her name again when he saw the darkness upon the rock shift and the shape emerged of a cat much bigger than Dirk remembered. Trudy stood still at the edge of that darkness, the orange of her body receding into the shadow like the very first flames of a new fire.

Dirk slowly put his hand through the bars.

Trudy lifted her shoulders and hissed. But a hiss in name alone, for what escaped her throat was not the same sound made by a house cat.

“Trudy. Hello. I’m caged, too.”

Now the tiger came forward, descending the rock with the agility of free thought.

Trudy went to his outstretched hand and sniffed him, once, an intake of breath that was louder than Dirk’s voice.

Dirk pulled his hand from the cage. He held the bars, his forehead still pressed to the steel. He held Trudy’s gaze, too.

“How do we get out of here?” he asked her.

Then he tapped his finger to his head.

He didn’t know it then, but the first few pounds of the weight of the world had been placed upon his shoulders. Still looking into the eyes of the great cat, Dirk started experiencing a restlessness that would build within, a brewing discontent, a concept too sloppily made to speak of.

Suddenly he wanted his insides to swell up beyond the limits of his skin; swell to such a size that his body would finally split, freeing the man within.

Trudy sat before him and tilted her head at an angle that suggested she was curious as to what he was thinking.

Dirk told her, as tears welled in his eyes.

“I’m being silly,” he said. “Worrying about worrying. Thinking about thinking. Wondering if I’m in the right place. You know what I think, Trudy? I think you and I are passing ships, you know, big boats in the same water. Here we are, meeting, but very soon I’ll be out of this place, running my own business, married. My own boss. And when I am? I’ll come back and buy you and Eula, some of the others, too. And in my house…there won’t be any cages.” He smiled as the tears rolled down his face. “I won’t be here for long.”