Always Watching

I am always watching.

They call me many things: “cat,” “stray,” “creature,” “monster.” None matters. Names are for humans. I answer only to what I am—older than their cities, the pavement, the emptiness in their hearts. I do not sleep. I eat only when hungry. I exist to move among them, to know them, and to take what they won't notice is gone.

There is a rhythm to the city. Humans stagger through their days, missing the tremor in the walls, the whisper in the wind, the shadow at their periphery. I am that shadow. I slip past corners, through alleyways, over rooftops, and inside open windows. I listen to their stories, read the tremor in their voices, the shiver in their hands, their unnamed brokenness.

I recall the city before it was known as a city. The streets were dirt tracks, the buildings simple timber, and still I moved among them, unseen. I watched the humans gather, argue, love, hate, and grieve. The particulars change, but the patterns remain. They do not learn. They do not notice. I do.

The first was the old man on Chestnut Street. Alone, his wife’s absence weighed on him like winter. His ledger echoed emptiness: bread vanished, bulbs flickered, hope failed. I lived in that ache, sensing each tremble and sigh, his desperate clutch at memory. He mistook feeding me scraps for kindness. I fed on his dread, his need for touch. When I curled around his legs, he believed himself good. He was, if my attention brought him any comfort.

I have slipped close enough to smell their fear. The young man who left his window cracked in the heat didn’t notice me on the sill. I perched, fur bristling, as he paced, muttering. His phone buzzed; instinct nudged him to it. I pounced, knocking it to the floor. He froze, eyes scanning the room, but I had melted into shadow. The brush of my tail was the only evidence. Lesson: the world watches, even when you think it does not.

The woman upstairs leaves notes on her fridge: “Don’t forget the milk. Don’t forget yourself.” She hides her loneliness in her handwriting. I do not ignore it. I press my paw to her windowpane at night, a silent accusation. She wakes, startled, and whispers apologies. She is mine, even if only for a moment.

Once, she caught a glimpse of my eyes through the glass, wide and reflective, a pair of impossibilities staring back at her. Her breath hitched. Her pulse flared like a warning drum. I did not flinch. I held the gaze just long enough for her fear to taste like electricity in her veins. Then I vanished. That night, she slept with a blanket pulled to her chin, but she never left her door unlocked again. Fear, as always, is my teacher’s tool.

Some nights, I slip into the homes of the careless. Doors unlocked, windows ajar; they think themselves generous or forgetful. I think those fools. I teach subtle lessons: a scratched floorboard, a toppled vase, a minor inconvenience. Just enough to remind them they are not alone.

I have stalked children through their dreams. The little girl at the end of Hawthorne Lane leaves a trail of toys on her porch every evening, a shrine to a father who doesn’t visit. I curl through those toys, pick them up, knock them down. She screams at first, cries, then laughs when she understands. But once, she stayed awake. I felt her little gaze pierce the dark from inside her bedroom. I froze. She whispered into the shadows, asking if I was there. I let the silence answer. She learned quickly: some presences do not speak, but they teach.

The man in the cardigan believes himself untouchable, striding his daily route, nodding to neighbors as if the city bends to his will. I watch, counting his steps, catching the quiver in his hand as he lifts his coffee. One night, I etched a faint scratch on his sleeve—so slight it is nearly a rumor. But that night, he paused. Turned sharply, sensing me just at the edge of his vision. I held still. Long enough for him to doubt, for the hairs on his neck to rise. When he finally shook his head, muttering about sleep deprivation, I melted away. Lesson delivered: the world notices, whether you notice it or not.

I feed on subtle mistakes—not the catastrophic ones, which amuse me but are too obvious —but hesitations, micro fissures in behavior. I know them better than they know themselves. I watch them lie. I am their silent witness, reminding them the universe does not forgive, and attention is both a gift and a curse.

One reckless youth left his apartment door open for an hour one summer night. I slipped inside, back pressed to the wall, tail twitching with anticipation. He danced around his living room, headphones on, blind to the quiet predator. I brushed against a lamp cord. It toppled, clanging to the floor. He froze, ripped off his headphones, eyes wide. I darted behind the couch, watching him. He didn’t call out. He didn’t scream. He simply looked around, each shadow now suspect. He would sleep differently that night. That was my gift: vigilance.

I have stalked the living, watched the dying. I have rested beside a man’s last desperate breath, a child’s first soft lie, a lover’s grief hidden behind shuttered eyes. Once, outside a hospital room, a woman choked on sobs, pleading for her father’s life. The air thickened with despair; I pressed close, her anguish striking like a sudden storm. Curled by her shoes, close enough to feel her body quake and taste the salt of her tears, I waited as exhaustion overtook her. When I left, I knew my presence would haunt her—not in memory she could name, but in unsettled dreams and restless waking.

I am patient. I wait—years, decades, lifetimes. I am eternal. They are ephemeral. I move through generations, a silent teacher in shadows. They do not thank me. They do not see me. But I am present. Always. Watching. Listening. Guiding.

The little girl, now grown, bears the scars I left in her childhood—unseen marks beneath her skin. She murmurs quietly to herself, moving through life with a careful touch, always attuned to pain and hesitation in others. She senses the tremors in a stranger’s heart, predicts their faltering before they realize it. She calls it intuition. I know it as the gift—and wound—I bestowed upon her.

The city changes, yet I remain. Buildings rise, crumble, burn. Streets reroute. Children are born, grow, falter, and die. The same in shadow, the same in silence. They tell stories about strays, about monsters, about luck or fate. I am all of these and none of them. I am the lesson that arrives without announcement, the shadow that lingers just long enough to leave its mark.

Sometimes, I imagine the city without me. Would it crumble faster? Would its people stumble more, forget more quickly? Perhaps. Perhaps not. They are fragile, brittle, and magnificent all at once. I will remain, a quiet constant. They will forget me. Or perhaps they will remember in fragments, in stories told with a shiver, in instincts they cannot explain. And I will continue. Watching. Waiting. Teaching. Guiding. Feeding on the tremor in their hearts.

One night, the woman who once fed me scraps—the one who trembled and whispered apologies in the dark—left her apartment door wide open. I slipped inside, expecting the usual thrill of subtle mischief. But I found her asleep, peaceful, untroubled. I curled around her, a soft weight, and realized she did not need me. She had carried my lessons forward in her own life, without knowing it. I did not scold. I left a soft paw print on her bedside table, a signature, and vanished before dawn.

I am the unseen thread woven through human lives, the invisible mentor, the silent chronicler of their stumbles and victories. They owe me nothing—not recognition, not gratitude, not even fear. I endure while they flicker and fade. I am the hush in the wind, the fleeting spark of realization that haunts their thoughts like a passing spirit.

I am not human. Not a beast. Not kind, nor cruel. I am the presence they cannot name, the lesson they cannot learn, the shadow that remains. And I am satisfied.

Always.