She just turned up one day. And sat on the window sill, staring through the glass at us. All day she sat and stared, never moving, never even blinking. We assumed she was a she, though we couldn’t say why. And she was cute, in her own way.
We didn’t know what she was, nor where she had come from.
And the staring got a bit disconcerting.
So I went out and dropped a few chunks of ham on the floor.
She looked at me, then looked at the food.
And did nothing.
So I went back inside. Through the window, I watched her this time, as she flapped some furry wings and sort of floated down to the titbits. After she wolfed them back, she drifted up to the windowsill again, and continued staring.
This pattern repeated itself for a few days. She was there when we went to bed, and she was still there when we got up in the morning. She always took the little morsels of food I dropped for her, and she always returned to her spot at the window.
And stared.
It got a little warmer, so I opened the window. And slowly, over the course of a few hours, the odd little creature inched her way closer to the gap, and slowly, so slowly, made her way inside the house.
She settled down and slept.
Her purple fur rose and fell as she snored through the night. We left the window open and went to bed. She was still there in the morning. When I came in and said hello, she sat up, stretched, blinked at me with sleepy eyes, and let out a little noise.
I put down a plate of food for her.
She stayed for a few days.
Then one day she came and sat on my lap when I was feeling lonely. She let me pet her. Let me ruffle her floppy ears, let me scritch her fur. And as I did, she thrummed a noise in her throat. Not a purr like a cat, but something weirdly soothing.
When she was really content, little flames came out of her twitching red nostrils.
That should have shocked me, but for some reason it didn’t.
Over the next few weeks, she made herself more and more at home. She cuddled up at night, slept by my feet on the bed.
Then it occurred to me.
I didn’t used to live alone.
There used to be someone living here with me.
I couldn’t really remember him, just had a vague impression that something human sized and shaped used to lie next to me at night. Not a purple furry creature curled up when I needed my legs to go.
I used to have neighbours too.
They all seem to be gone now. Their houses empty and abandoned.
There’s no one left around here.
She keeps looking at me funny.
Like she’s hungry.
