Cat in the Rain

The rain came in low, steady sheets, palm leaves dripping onto gravel, salty air heavy with the swell of the sea as it unrolled in a long, gray line. In the hotel room the window fogged; the American wife stood watching. The weather pressed against everything—outside and in—bringing a small, sharp hunger she could not name.

It was raining. The rain dripped from the palm trees. Water pooled in the gravel paths. The sea broke in one long line in the rain, then slipped back along the beach to break again, long and indifferent.

The motorcars were gone from the square by the war monument. Across the square, in the doorway of the café, a waiter stood looking out at the empty place.

The American wife stood at the window and watched. Right under their window a cat crouched beneath one of the dripping green tables, trying to make herself so compact that the raindrops would miss her. The sight made the wife’s chest ache with a sudden tenderness.

“I’m going down and get that kitty,” the American wife said.

“I’ll do it,” her husband offered from the bed.

“No, I’ll get it. The poor kitty’s out trying to keep dry under a table.”

Her husband went on reading, propped up on two pillows at the head of the bed. “Don’t get wet,” he said without looking up.

She went downstairs. The hotel owner stood as she passed the office and bowed. His desk was at the far end of the dim room. He was an old man and very tall.

She liked the hotelkeeper. He moved with a kind of formal gravity that pleased her; she liked the dignity of his small bows, the way he listened to any complaint as though it were important.

“Il piove,” she said. She liked saying it, liked the sound of Italian in his office.

“Si, si, Signora, brutto tempo. It is very bad weather,” he answered, standing behind the desk.

Outside the rain was harder. A man in a rubber cape crossed the empty square toward the café. Perhaps the cat had slipped around to the right and would keep close under the eaves. As she stood in the doorway, an umbrella opened behind her. It was the maid who looked after their room.

“You must not get wet,” the maid smiled, speaking in Italian. Of course, the hotelkeeper had sent her.

With the maid holding the umbrella over her, she walked along the gravel path until they were beneath the window. The bright green table was washed clean by the rain, but the cat was gone. She felt a sudden, small disappointment, almost a hollowness. The maid looked up at her.

“Ha perduto qualque cosa, Signora?” the maid asked.

“There was a cat,” the American wife said.

“A cat?” said the maid.

“Si, il gatto.”

“A cat?” the maid laughed softly. “A cat in the rain?”

“Yes,” the wife said, “under the table.” Then she added, quieter, “Oh, I wanted it so much. I wanted a cat.”

She did not know why the idea of that small, bedraggled animal had made her feel so suddenly sorrowful. If she could have the cat, she thought, perhaps she might feel less empty. The maid continued to hold the umbrella without speaking.

She turned and walked back into the hotel. The padrone bowed again as she passed the dim desk. He remained there, behind the far desk, inscrutable and tall. She went upstairs. George was reading.

“Did you get the cat?” he asked, glancing up.

“It was gone.”

“Wonder where it went to,” he said, and returned to his book.

She sat on the edge of the bed and looked out of the window.

The square was empty and the sea lay as a pale, steady strip between rain and shore. Everything outside was bleached to the same soft gray. Inside, a weight of boredom settled on her, a dull, unnameable pressure. She watched the rain glass the windowpane and felt that same small ache from before.

“I don’t know why I wanted that cat so much,” she said, watching water slide down the glass. “I just feel so... I don’t know... I’m so tired of everything.”

George glanced up. “You’ve been taking it too easy,” he said.

She did not answer. The rain outside seemed to copy the dim feelings moving inside her—longing she could not place, a weariness like a curtain she could not push aside. A cat would have been a small thing to care for, an interruption to the dullness of their holiday. The thought that the cat had slipped away to some dry corner made her feel strangely abandoned.

“I wish I had a cat,” she said softly. “I want something to care for.”

George made a small sound without stopping his reading.

“Don’t you think it would be good to have something warm and soft to hold onto?” she asked.

Her husband did not look up. “I like it short,” he said, half to himself. He turned a page.

She crossed to the mirror and looked at herself. Her hair, cut short in a style she had once liked, felt wrong today. She touched it, the smoothness foreign to her fingertips.

“I want to grow my hair out again,” she said.

“What’s wrong with it the way it is?” George asked.

“I’m tired of it. I want to be like I was before,” she said. She remembered the weight of longer hair and the way it had made her feel. “I miss it.”

“You look fine,” he replied. “I like it short.”

She sat in a chair near the window and watched the puddles form in the square. The rain moved in a steady rhythm. She felt a restlessness that had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with the small erosion of herself: the tiny ways life had narrowed and made her feel smaller.

There was a knock at the door.

George said, “That must be room service.”

She opened it. The maid stood on the threshold holding something fragile in her arms. It was the cat—wet, wide-eyed, trembling with cold and fear. The maid smiled as she handed it to her.

“The padrone said you wanted it,” the maid said.

She took the cat and held it close. Its heart beat fast against her chest, a warm, alive thump. For the first time that day a real smile touched her face.

“Thank you,” she whispered as the maid left. She settled back into the chair and stroked the cat’s damp fur, whispering soft words. The purring began, slow and steady, and she felt a small easing inside her, a momentary brightening as if something rough had been smoothed.

George looked up briefly from his book. “Well, you got your cat.”

“Yes,” she said, and the sound of the word carried an odd contentment. She looked down at the cat curled in her lap, soft and present. Outside, the rain kept time against the glass, less a burden now and more like a watchful drum.

They sat in the room together for a long while. George read and she stroked the cat. Occasionally his eyes flicked toward her, then back to the page. The cat made a small, contented sound and their room felt warmer.

Yet even with the animal’s small comfort, the restlessness returned in quieter waves. The cat soothed for a moment; but the wider pull, the longing for something different, remained.

“I think I need something else,” she said at last, though she could not name what “something else” might be.

“Like what?” George asked, finally setting the book down.

“I don’t know—something different. A change.”

“You’ve got a cat now,” he said. “Isn’t that enough for today?”

“It’s not the cat,” she said. “It’s everything. I want to feel real again. I want to feel excited about something.”

He shrugged. “You’re bored.”

She looked at him, then at the cat, which had settled deeper into her lap and begun to purr more loudly. The rain fell on, steady as ever, and the room held the small, simple tableau: a woman, a cat, a husband with a book, a square of rain beyond the window. For now, that was enough to soften the edges. For now, the small life between the walls felt less empty.

She shifted in her chair and looked again at the square, the puddles, the gray line of the sea. The sense of inertia that had followed her all day seemed to press at the edges of her thoughts, but the cat’s warmth was an anchor.

A soft knock came at the door. The maid entered and, with a little bow, offered the wet creature she had found. The wife took it and held it close; its heartbeat steadied her.

Time passed in quiet, punctuated only by the rustle of pages and the cat’s slow breathing. She felt a small peace, but the deeper currents of dissatisfaction were still there, waiting beneath.

She spoke again about wanting something different, and George listened in his usual distant way. Outside, the rain continued its steady descent, as inexorable as the quiet changes in a life lived alongside another.