Shortly after that Greta brought into the world six perfectly healthy kittens. I didn’t get to witness the birth; I didn’t even hear it. It happened early one morning, as I slept with the help of some sleeping pills my advisor had given me. When I woke up I felt a kind of bustling around beneath my sheets and I saw that they’d been born not in the drawer I had so lovingly prepared for them, but in my bed, in the space between my legs. That awed me no end. What kind of reality do animals conceive of, or at least, what kind of reality did my cat conceive of where I was concerned? It’s obvious that her gesture was not happenstance but of her own choosing, if it is that cats, unlike we humans, do make certain decisions. The newborns made high-pitched noises, like birds shrieking; they squirmed about constantly, attached to the nipples of their mother who lay there stretched out before them, allowing the six to feed from her nipples. It was Greta, much more than those barely formed creatures, who awoke in me an immense tenderness. Her surrender to her kittens’ sucking was total, and at the same time, she could not have looked more exultant. I spent a moment in silence with her, watching her in her role as proud mother, as if, rather than an instinct, her manner and her attentiveness spoke to a sacrifice, its results now visible.

I carefully got out of bed, and as I was making breakfast, I realized that for the first time in two weeks I didn’t want not to exist. I called Marisa after to tell her the good news. When I went back into the bedroom, neither Greta nor her kittens were on the bed. I imagined her carrying them one by one by their necks to the dresser drawer, where Milton, responsible I suppose for fathering the litter, had also made himself comfortable. Everything seemed to be in its place. In those days the only thing that brought me any real joy was seeing Greta with her children. When she wasn’t nursing them she was cleaning them with her tongue, licking them day and night, one at a time, with admirable dedication. If she left them a moment alone in the drawer, it was to eat or to use the litter box. The rest of the time she dwelled in absolute and blissful devotion.