we have a borrower cat this week

our borrower cat is named lucy. lucy in actuality belongs to my roomate's friend mariaelena but she is staying with us for the week because mariaelena's apartment complex doesn't allow pets. they never allow pets but this is the only week they ever check so lucy gets to travel abroad to visit with us. lucy is a fat cat. in mariaelena's email she called lucy 'my gordita.' owing to this i often think of her somewhat absurdly in my head as lucy the gordita. lucy is the queen of our tiny apartment. she is declawed and very tame and quite sweet. her belly is white and the rest of her is grey. she likes to have her tummy rubbed and purrs loudly. sometimes she puts her mouth very gently on your hand when you pet her. she doesn't really play because i think she is really old.

tonight when i came home from school i rubbed her belly in the hall awhile. she 'hung out' while i checked my email. there was lots of purring. then i went to the bathroom and she went back out into the hall. while brushing my teeth i heard a strange noise so i peeked into the hallway to see what it was. lucy was sitting by herself crunching on some cat kibbles. all i could see was her fat backside and chubby haunches in the orange streetlight pouring through the front window. it made me really really sad because i wanted her to come hang out with me some more and we could both enjoy it. instead she sat there fat and alone eating food by herself in the middle of the night by moonlight. is it because she wasn't comfortable with me? why didn't she want to continue to hang out with me? is it because i shouldn't have shunned petting her in order to attend to my own business? will i ever find a living being that i can sync needs with? what is my own business? why can't cats-wanting-to-be-petted and people-wanting-to-pet-cats ever find each other on the same point in the space-time continuum?