Maybe they would come back as cats and lie on sunny windowsills, not touching but close enough to hear each other breathing, to recognize the shift in cadence marking the slip into sleep. Maybe he’d lick his paws while she slept—though maybe he wouldn’t be a he and she wouldn’t be a she, and it wouldn’t matter. Maybe they’d be brothers, or he’d be her mother, or they’d both be rescued strays, feral cats from the outskirts of parking lots, strangers until he looked up one day from his new home in the sunny window and there she was in the cat carrier, pretending not to notice him or to be fazed by any of it. His name might be Maple. Her name might be something terrible like Mr. Meow. Maybe they wouldn’t know their names. Maybe the sounds the humans made would mean nothing.
Maybe the sounds they made now meant nothing.
What if, as cats, they thought, Wait, do I know you? What if they saw each other’s human forms in dreams, from the perspective of cats, mostly ankles and shoes, chins and dangling hands? Maybe they wouldn’t care. Maybe they wouldn’t be curious at all. Maybe they wouldn’t want to solve the puzzle of their attachment, but instead would be content to lie on sunny sills and not waste any of their nine lives “figuring it out.” Maybe when the sun set, they would trust it was only temporary.
Unless they were cats first, and now, looking at each other across the booth, coffee gone cold, complicating the simplest things, going over it all again and again, going in different directions without wanting to go in different directions, maybe the heat they feel is the sun on their fur.
