She came in through the kitchen door already moving wrong. I don’t mean unsteady. I mean wrong in the sense of not matching any of her usual patterns, the ones I have spent considerable time cataloguing — the keys-then-bag-then-shoes sequence, the particular weight of her steps when she’s tired, the way she usually stands at the counter for a second before deciding what to do with herself. Tonight she came in already humming something with actual volume to it, not the under-breath kind, and she put the bag down without really putting it down, more dropped it near the chair, and started moving her shoulders around while she opened the refrigerator.
I watched this from the hallway entrance, which is where I conduct most of my serious observation.
She pulled out something wrapped in paper, I couldn’t tell what, and set it on the counter, and then — I want to describe this accurately because I don’t think I’ve seen it before in quite this configuration — she turned in a full circle. Not stumbling. Deliberate. One full rotation with her arms slightly out, like she was checking the room was still there, and then she kept cooking as if nothing had happened.
I came in further. I sat by the table leg, which is a good vantage point for kitchen activity, close enough to supervise, far enough to not be stepped on, in theory.
She kept doing it. Little bursts of it. She’d chop something, and then there’d be a pause where instead of chopping she’d just sway for a second, weight shifting foot to foot, and once she actually sang a few words out loud, not the mumbled ones she usually does with her hands busy elsewhere, but clear and a little too loud for the size of the kitchen, and then she laughed at herself, short, through her nose, like she’d caught herself doing something and found it funny rather than embarrassing.
I didn’t know what to do with any of this.
There is no established category in my mind for a person who is this unbothered. I know what she looks like tired. I know the particular stillness of her being upset, the careful way she holds a phone afterward, the long motionless stretches I’ve learned to read as something being wrong. I did not have a file for whatever this was. There was no stillness in it at all. If anything it was the opposite of stillness, it was a kind of looseness in her that made her bump the cabinet door with her hip on her way past and not even notice, which under ordinary conditions would have at minimum produced a muttered word.
At one point she got down, actually crouched, to get the big pot out from the low cabinet, and while she was down there at my level she looked right at me and said something to me directly — I didn’t catch the words, I rarely do, but the tone was unmistakably pleased, almost conspiratorial, like she was letting me in on something — and then she reached out and scrubbed the top of my head with her knuckles, harder than her usual pass, and stood back up still smiling before I’d even decided how to receive the gesture.
I followed her sock feet for a while. This felt like the correct response given the general energy of the room, something was clearly happening that involved movement, and movement near the floor has historically meant I should be involved. I put a paw out once, lightly, more as a formality than an actual attempt, and she stepped neatly around it without losing whatever rhythm she was keeping, which told me she’d noticed me but wasn’t especially worried about me being underfoot tonight, which itself was unusual, she’s normally more careful.
I sat back down instead and watched the rest of it from a safer distance, tail wrapped around my feet, trying to work out if there was a version of this I should be matching.
The smell changed a few times — something with a sharper edge went into the pot, and under it the ordinary warm smell of her, nothing new added to it, no unfamiliar perfume or shampoo to investigate, which at least ruled out one category of concern. Whatever was making her move like that wasn’t coming from outside her. It was just her, doing this, for reasons that weren’t going to be explained to me and that I had no way of asking about directly.
Eventually the pot started making its low bubbling sound and she turned the heat down and leaned against the counter facing the room instead of the stove, arms crossed loosely, still smiling at nothing I could identify, humming the tail end of whatever she’d been singing earlier under her breath now instead of out loud, winding back down the way the vent does before it goes quiet.
I came and sat directly in front of her, close enough that she had to look down to keep her balance around me, which is usually a reliable way of getting attention, and it worked, she crouched again, properly this time, knees and all, and scratched under my chin with both hands like she had all the time in the world for it, still humming, her weight rocking back slightly onto her heels.
Whatever had been in her all evening hadn’t gone anywhere. It had just gotten quieter, the way heat does when you turn it down but don’t turn it off. I leaned my whole head into her hands and let her keep going, and somewhere behind her the pot kept its low steady sound, and she kept humming, off and on, not really a song anymore, just the shape of one.