“I’ve started to get angry with him” is the phrase after which many cats end up “for adoption”.
I examined Marcos. He was healthy: shiny fur, calm breathing, a heart that ran like an old but reliable engine. No sign of aggression or madness.
But there was another obvious thing: the way he looked at his owner. Not as a source of food, but as a responsibility. With concern.
— Has it always been quiet? — I asked for.
— Yeah. While my husband was alive, he was exemplary. They watched football together. Then… then my husband died and the cat came with me. We slept together. I said: “At least someone is breathing next to me”.
He said it too easily.
— And now he doesn’t want me to breathe next to him, — I commented.
— Exactly! — she exploded. — I joke that he evicts me from the bedroom.
Marcos approached and rested one leg on his shoe.
— Tell me, — I continued, — Does it wake you up at more or less the same time?
— Yeah. Almost always between three and four.
— And before that sleep well?
— I think so. I go to bed around eleven, take the pill… and then I kind of sink somewhere. And he takes me out.
I didn’t like the word “takes me out”.
— How does it feel when you wake up?
— Bad. Heavy head, racing heart, dry mouth. Sometimes I get short of breath. I think it’s the tension. I put the pill under my tongue and go to the couch. After twenty minutes it goes away.
I asked a few more questions: about pauses in breathing, sudden gasps, the feeling that the heart “turns around”. It wasn’t exactly my territory anymore, but when someone ends up at a vet’s office with these symptoms, they haven’t heard it somewhere.
— I’m afraid — I finally said — that in this story the main patient is not the cat.
— As?
— Marcos is fine. He hasn’t gone crazy nor does he want to kick her out of the house. For him the important thing is that at night something happens to you that scares you.
— Fear? I’m asleep.
— You think you sleep. He sees that he stops breathing, or that he drowns, or that he moves suddenly. He doesn’t know what hypertension or sleep apnea is. He only knows that his owner is doing poorly. And wakes her up. Until he changes his posture and feels better.
She looked at me as if I had just suggested believing in superstitions.
— So… is it saving me?
— I can’t prove it — I said honestly —, but there are too many coincidences. And I don’t think the problem is the cat.
