Bobby

When I was thirteen, I had a little cat named Bobby. I called him that because there was something about him that reminded me of a bobcat—not just the way he looked, but the way he carried himself. He had that same stubborn, wild little personality. I loved that cat. One afternoon, I came home from school and found Bobby lying dead in the middle of the road. He had been hit by a car. Somehow, he must have gotten out of the house, tried to cross the street, and never made it to the other side. I was devastated. For weeks afterward, I kept thinking about him. At thirteen, losing a pet like that felt enormous, especially when it happened so suddenly. At the time, we lived in a large three-story house directly across from an elementary school, right on the corner. The house had bedrooms in the attic, two rooms on the main floor, and a huge finished room in the basement that served as a den and my bedroom. The laundry area was also downstairs, but it sat farther back in the basement, beyond my room. It was darker there. Even during the day, that part of the basement always seemed dim. At night, it was the kind of place you didn't really want to walk into unless you had a reason. One night, not long after Bobby died, I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep when I heard a cat meowing. It was coming from the laundry room. At first, I thought I might have imagined it. Then I heard it again. And again. The meowing gradually became louder and more persistent. It didn't sound like an animal screaming in pain. It sounded distressed—more like a cat that was lost, trapped somewhere, or trying to get someone's attention. I stayed completely still. The longer it continued, the more convinced I became that there was actually a cat somewhere in that room. Maybe one had gotten into the basement. Maybe it was behind the washing machine. Maybe it had crawled into the wall somehow. Those were the explanations I tried to give myself. None of them made me want to get out of bed. Eventually, I pulled the blankets up, covered my ears, and decided I would deal with it in the morning, when sunlight was coming through the basement windows and the laundry room didn't feel quite as threatening. When I woke up, it was the first thing I checked. I searched everywhere. Behind the washer and dryer. Between the machines. Around the pipes and vents. Along the walls. Near the ceiling. Anywhere a cat could have possibly crawled, hidden, or gotten stuck. There was nothing there. No cat. No obvious way one could have gotten in. And no explanation for what I had heard. I can't say with certainty that the meowing I heard that night was Bobby. But at thirteen years old, only weeks after losing him, that was exactly who I thought it was.