Eric watched Rona come walking stiffly down the hallway, a distracted and distressed look on her face and the tin of cat food still in her hand. It'd been open a while, and the house was starting to smell of it, as if Rona was walking down the aisle of a church on Sunday and wafting the censer.

Rona didn't say anything as she walked past Eric and Miranda. She disappeared back into the laundry, where the cat things were, casting her eyes into corners, looking for the animal.

"She looks worried" Eric said to Miranda. "I haven't seen her look worried before."

"Yeah" Miranda, who had seen it before, said. She leaned her arm across the back of her chair and stretched towards the laundry, as if better to project her voice: "Rona, how long's she been missing for?"

"I don't know!" Rona said, coming back from the laundry.

"Rona, honey, put the cat food down" Miranda said gently. Rona did so, on the table right in front of Miranda, and looking at the pink goop inside the tin Miranda wished she hadn't said anything. "She'll come back" she said.

"She never goes missing at dinner-time" Rona fretted. "She always comes back. It's the only time she ever pays me any attention, for god's sake!"

"She's a cat" Eric reasoned. "She's unpredictable. And it's not such a cold night, she's probably gone out exploring." He was recalling a cat his parents had once had - except that cat had run away at the age of three and had never been seen again. "She'll come back" he said again.

"I don't know why I'm even so upset" Rona said, sounding like she was close to tears. "She's such a little cow to me anyway. No-one would ever know she was my cat."

"She's the house cat" Miranda said. "She knows this is her home. And she knows you're here and you feed her. She'll come back to you."

But in fact, when the cat did come back, at three in the morning, it was to Eric that she came: scraping in through his open window and jumping onto his bed, onto his belly, waking him up and giving him the fright of his life.