text: I don’t own a cat. Can you call a cat a thing? You own a pet. Doesn’t this put them in the same category as your hat or scarf? You own scarves. I own quite a few myself, a whole collection of scarves, in fact. I suppose I don’t love them the way I love a pet. I had pet rats. They live only a few of years, about as long as a well-worn scarf. Rats are simple too. You keep them in a cage. You clean the cage. You own the rat. You own the cage. You what I don’t own? A cat. No one here knows who owns the cat. You would assume: doesn’t that mean it’s a stray? No, this is a well-fed cat. He just got a shiny new collar. I don’t know how anyone gets a cat to wear a collar. We’ve always had indoor/outdoor cats, and every collar we tried putting on them disappeared at some point. Maybe we didn’t get pretty enough collars. One of our cats went through more collars than the rest by far. She was more like a wolf than a cat sometimes, howling at the moon, much like this cat, which I do not own, is howling at my door. It’s funny how when a cat is yours, it’s family, but when it belongs to someone else, they own a cat. Everyone pets the mystery cat on the sidewalk, and so did I, until he followed me inside one day. I didn’t realize how horribly allergic I was to cats until I moved out of my mother’s house for college. Being able to breath was amazing. A new experience. It seemed as though I could keep breathing forever without-- How is this cat still yowling? It needs to stop for oxygen right? My cat’s voice went from a mew to a yowl as she aged. You would think there would be less breath with age, but I guess cats are different. Maybe they breath a bit easier the older they get. It occurs to me that she may have just been going deaf, which I suppose isn’t uncommon. I wonder if this cat, which I do not own, thinks I’m a poor deaf human, who will definitely open up the door. If. He. Just. Yells. Loud. Enough. I know he’s neither old nor going deaf. The first by sight. The second by the fact that every time I attempt to type, the yowling begins once again. I began typing this on my laptop, but it’s too close to the door, and not portable. So, now, I am on my phone, with its silent touchscreen keyboard, typing this on Google Docs. And yet, still, the cat howls to be granted entry. Why? I checked. My apartment’s baseboard heater, circa 1973, has come out of its less than seventy-degree-Fahrenheit slumber in the way that someone with sleep apnea is awoken at 3 a.m. which, as chance would have it, is also the time right now. I’ve turned off all the lights in the apartment, the heater crackles concerningly, and here I am, typing an essay on my phone. Perhaps, finally, the cat is gone. During the day, I like him well enough. I let him in to nap in my apartment. I leave out a bowl of water. I also get cold easily, which means it’s always warm here. I understand, I offer a very enticing place to sleep in any hour of the day or night. Cats don’t care for business hours, but I do. I thought about getting a cat, this past year. But, having had cats in the past, I know that caring for a cat is an investment. When I moved into an apartment alone, especially, I thought perhaps now was time for a cat. Thankfully, this apartment came with a cat I can own vicariously through my mystery neighbor. I just need to make sure to impress upon the cat, that I do not own a cat. I think I will try to do that tomorrow, when I let him in for a nap.