It was such a great house, too – they’d never been able to afford to rent a whole house in the city where they used to live. And the rent was half what they had paid for their last apartment. The house had two bedrooms, a finished basement. It was cute, forties-era, unostentatious in that timid, post-war mode of cautious optimism. An outlook that seemed in line with what was happening in their lives. That is, their life, together. It had a massive back yard, with black, needly trees looming above, squirrels scrambling up and down the trunks. The cat went insane for them. The cat stayed out all day, stalking squirrels, stalking birds, stalking crickets. She would bring the crickets inside, look around to make sure someone was watching, and gulp down the frantically clicking insects in a kind of performance. These were the happiest days of the cat’s young life. They bought a barbecue and there was enough room to set up the croquet wickets in a fairly challenging course that wound its way around the picnic table and the fire pit.
