text: I meditate on the kitchen floor. By which I mean I sit, legs crossed, mostly still, and pointedly try not to notice the fossilised food remnants haunting me from under the cupboard door. The veneer is cracked in such a way it resembles a curling lip, and I work hard to not think about it too hard, lest it threaten to warp into something edging on sinister. I just sit, breathing mindfully, which is desperately uncomfortable, batting away any wayward thoughts, or trying to. Until at last I am disturbed by the deafening stare of a small brown cat. This is our oft practiced ritual. He is hungry, or so he claims, and I pretend to be agitated by his flagrant disregard for my inner wellbeing. “Food?” Say I. “Prrp” says he. And so the conversation goes, every time. While demolishing a generous portion of biscuits, I imagine he questions my habits. “Why are you on the floor mummy?” I tell him I do this because the internet says it is the way to inner peace. That it is the path to a shiny white plastic enlightenment, and I believe them, sometimes. Because frankly it’s a choice between transcendental bliss or ice cream, and I can’t afford to buy any more fat-girl clothes. I meditate on the kitchen floor, and he asks me if it’s white-plastic enlightenment I’m searching for down there, or whether I’m just looking for stray morsels. The latter, he says, is wiser, and I am beginning to agree. We watch the news together in the mornings and descend into furious debate over the behaviour of MPs with regularity. He is firm in defence of filibustering, claiming it has political merit, and I rankle at the notion every time. More than once I have slammed the door in petulant frustration, leaving him alone to focus fully on the washing of a limb. We do not fall out often though. He is my closest confidant in whiskers. I talk to him about silence on the hard days, and how I hate it, and how I need it, which is somehow all the worse. In sympathy he breaks it for me by demonstrating how to add volume to a stare, and I thank him with carefully placed pressure behind the ears. I ask about his childhood sometimes, and wonder what he means when he says he can’t remember. Most evenings he curls up on my lap and describes his dreams, but only those that set his paws to twitching. They are all black and white films of pursuits and victories, strategy and success. There is a violence to them I think, though he never tells me so. He says the television helps him build a world outside of our flat, and my tears cast little spikes in his fur, as I mutter sorry over and over. I cry for his freedom, and for mine, and he purrs his low hymn to drown out my worry. We are trapped here he says, confined by co-dependency and circumstance, both caught by sadness and dulled instinct. He says he forgives me, but only after tuna.