It was early morning...or late night, she couldn't quite remember and hadn't worn her watch. The night was cool, the summer heat asleep along with everyone but her. The gravel scraped under her shoes as she shuffled along, eerily loud in the sleeping silent. The stairs were steep, but she climped them without hesitation: she knew these stairs like the palms of her hands.

The cat was curling around the posts of the porch, it's white bib and feet strangely bright against the shadows.

It mewed silently, urgently, and stared up at her with wide eyes.

She knew this cat. It was her neighbour's cat, and desperately underfed. It was an echo, a perfect shadow of her own ginger cat in face, figure and form, save the colour.

It mewed again, silently, amber eyes wild, and thrust it's head against her hand desperately, then withdrew sharply.

"Here kitty, kitty..."

The cat instantly warmed to her, eyes still wild, movements sharp. She knew this cat too well: the secret meetings behind the raspberry patch, near the compost, the fleeting strokes snuck below the rock wall. It wasn't supposed to be here, this was forbidden territory, guarded by both her own cat and her own mother. Both, she knew, would chase this cat away the moment either of them saw it.

The cat stood a few feet away, black against black, watching her. It seemed loath to leave, but uneasy to stay.

She smiled at it and stood, shuffling under the porchlight to the back door. There, on the green Chinese slate tiles lay the tiny corpse of a mouse. An adult mouse. The cat sat just around the corner of the house, listening to her.

"Poor dear," she said, glancing up at the cat, but whether she meant the dead mouse or the starving cat, neither could tell.

The door creaked as she slipped inside, leaving cat and mouse to skulk in the dark.

When she went outside in the morning or the afternoon, she couldn't tell which, both mouse and cat were gone.

Maybe her mother had chased them off.

Or her cat.

Either way, she had a date with the night shadow behind the raspberry patch in fifteen minutes, and she'd ask him then.

Before&After