The cat didn’t cry, but he didn’t move either.
While the family said goodbye amid white flowers and lit candles, he climbed onto the coffin and settled there, with his head resting as if he were seeking the warmth he had always known. Did he know what was happening? Was he waiting for his owner to wake up and pet him one more time? No one could answer that, but no one had the heart to move him either.
Cases like this have been repeated in different parts of the world: cats who refuse to leave the body of the person who cared for them, as if they understood, in their animal way, that something had been broken forever. A cat doesn’t have to speak for us to know that it misses someone too. Sometimes it is enough to see it stay still, right there, where the arms that fed it used to be.