This evening, at the dinner table, I asked Gavin if he were cold, and he said, “No. I’m not.”
“Really?” I said. “I’m freezing. How aren’t you cold?”
“I have fur.”
“You have fun?”
“No,” he said. “Fur. I have fur.”
“Where?” I asked.
“On my back.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My fur,” he said. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
“You don’t have fur on your back. Who are you kidding?”
“I’m a small talking cat with fur.” And then he meowed a couple of times before eating the rest of his noodles.
And the thing is, he’s so resolutely in the play of his life—the rest of us in important, but undeniably minor roles—that I look forward to the next story, because that’s really what’s begun, what he’s telling.