The cat came in on little fog feet. I was not even aware of him until he jumped onto the bed. His whiskers tickled as he snuffled my cheek. Earlier he had lain by the fireplace. Is there anything more hygge than lying close to a loudly purring cat whose warm fur smells of woodsmoke, watching him knead the duvet?

I closed the book and turned out the light.

I had a decent home, the cat said, his words muffled by the purr but still clear. I’m not saying it was the lap of luxury. But I had food and fresh water every day, and a dry bed, and at the time I’d never known anything better. I was born in a cage in a shelter, he said. I never knew how sweet, with the right human, life could be, especially when the human is a female of a certain age living without a mate.

I was adopted to be a mouser not a pet, he said, and my first home wasn’t a nice house like this, it wasn’t even a house, it was a store, a convenience store just off the highway, run by an old guy in a wheelchair with his wife and son.

I did my job, the cat said, I kept the mice away, and in return I had my bed—really just a cardboard box with a ratty old bath towel folded in it—and my bowl was kept full of crunchies, and well, that was it, my life, my whole world. The people weren’t bad as people go, but they weren’t cat people, either, not by a long shot, the cat said, and after I made the mistake of jumping in the guy’s lap one day while he was rolling through the aisles only to find myself flying into the cereal boxes I kept my distance. It’s strange how wide the range of human responses to our kind is, the cat said. As precious as human young to some, to others we’re not much higher than plants, and to still others filthy varmints with no more rights or feelings than a stick.