It is evening in Helena. After watching the McNeil-Lehrer’s Report and having dinner with Sheri, I went upstairs and sit in the sunroom with our Siamese cat, Fiji.  Looking from my second floor sun porch, I could see a thin layer of light pink sky above the nearby Elkhorn Mountains.  White cirrus clouds floated away in the higher sky, stretching thin in a wispy pattern.

As I watched, twilight crept in.  Figi was sleeping, curled up on my lap. This was our evening time together, alone on the sun porch. Fiji was used to me talking to her.

“Gigi, It’s swell to have a cat for a pal.”  It sounded too much like Hemingway.

Fiji opened her blue Siamese eyes in a squint, looking up at me, slowly closing them again.

“You and I have been pals for a long time, since Charles brought you home as a kitten, when he lived with us in Washington, before he moved to Texas.”

Fiji didn’t stir. She had heard my monologue before.

“When we visited a year later in El Paso, Charles was amazed how you still remembered me, following me around his house, staying near me, talking to me in your froggy Siamese voice.”

Fjii shifted position, stretching out across my legs, continuing to purr.

“I remember the day Charles called me in Helena after his divorce, concerned about you.  His mom was keeping you, but her cats chased you and forced you to live under her floor. You were dirty, and alarmingly thin. When I heard that, I packed the car.“

Liking the soft sound of my narrative with her name interspersed in it, Figi stretched out one arm, most of it now hanging off my leg in thin air.

“What Charles didn’t know was that I had been keeping a picture of you on my refrigerator. I hadn’t forgotten you.”

Figi was purring, her eyes closed.

“When I picked you up in New Mexico, you were scared and hardly noticed me. Your eyes were glued on the other cats as I put you in the travel cage. You didn’t calm down for a hundred miles, and I finally let you ride outside the cage. That’s when you relaxed, riding on my lap as I drove. You rode like that, two days on my leg.”

Fjii was still purring at the sound of my voice.

“That night in the Santa Fe, you were purring on the bed, and following me around the motel room like a shadow, like in the past.  I went out to PETCO, and came back with a red collar and nametag with your new address in Montana.  You were the happiest girl with your new collar, sitting on my lap as we drove north, me petting you all the way.”

A cold breeze came through a slight opening in the sunroom windows. I adjusted my legs, and Fiji opened her eyes and hopped gingerly down to the floor.  Her tail brushed against me on the way out, and I realized I was the lucky one.

Looking out from my perch, I saw people coming home from work in dirt-covered cars and pickups with the lights on. In the distance, I could hear the vibrating rumble of a train.   Helena Valley was becoming dark, lit with amber, green, blue, and red dots

Sitting there, I realized nothing has changed with the night, only our perspective. Night is an illusion, a disappearing trick, as the earth merely rotates one part away from the sun for a while.  Everything on the surface of Earth, although unseen, is still the same.  It will always be the same, lit and unlit, again and again, forever.