He is outside the rear doors of the van, slightly to the side, craning his neck to peer into the van’s depth like a politely enquiring neighbour. A tabby with white patches. We’re timed on our delivery runs so I can’t get distracted, but he is insistent, climbing across me to the front passenger seat then settling down to loaf. I don’t do anything; I just don’t stop anything either. I look at him as I turn the ignition. The van shudders to life. He gives me a glance. I pull away. He gives nothing in the way of protest. I drive my route. Several more stops. All those in and outs of the van and he doesn’t move, not even once.

When we get home I pick him up, hold him in the crook of my left arm. Something in the way of a reaction then, that wide-eyed look of alarm they do that could be the coming Armageddon itself or just the closing of a cupboard two doors down. Inside with the door shut and I admit he’s agitated. Prowling the bed-sit, hovering by the door, then scratching at it. I search the cupboards. The best I can do is some peanut butter. I go to the shop and pick up some tuna. The prowling and scratching turns to wandering and sniffing. By eleven he’s settled. I make him up a cardboard box lined with my thickest hoodie but he stays put on his end of the sofa.

Five days and it’s like we never weren’t together. This is where the second act montage would be. I begin to notice things that make him him — the way he dribbles onto my jeans when he’s been purring for a time, the way he walks figures of eight between my two pot plants in the morning when he wants his breakfast, letting his tail catch the leaves, the way he lies on his back and ‘hunts’ the leg of the coffee table.

I don’t buy any toys, but he settles on a pair of Elaine’s hair ties I’ve somehow managed to acquire and shuttle between places. I shoot them across the room and he bolts after them, hunts them, mauls them, carries them around proprietorially.

But I always know. I know I am checking he’s nowhere near the door when I leave the bed-sit, that I open the door tentatively when I get back. I Know I ignore the posters for lost pets I nearly always stop and check and snap a photo of just in case. I know I’m avoiding the social media sites with the neighbourhood noticeboards asking for the name of a good plumber.

I thought he was a she until I hear him talked about on the news. I hadn’t checked. I just went on size. I take a look at the local newspaper’s website. He has a name I’d never have chosen. It turns out he’s sick. That’s the newsworthy angle: ‘sick fuck steals sick cat’, or something to the effect. There is a video. Through juddering sobs the family’s kid informs me there’s a heart condition. I give him a visual once over. What does a heart condition look like? That explains his smaller size, I figure. There’s medication he needs the mum tells me.

I look at him again, curled up in his box. He stares back questioningly, like is there something he should know? Did somebody call?

They keep saying ‘stolen’. There’s doorbell footage of the top of my head as I drop a package at their door. Thank God it’s winter. Thank fuck I’m wearing the trapper hat with the peak. The sun’s low and the quality is grainy. Across the street, through a cataract of pixels you see me get into the van. Then him follow me in, crawl across my lap. Any appeal of ignorance on my part, that he stowed away unseen would be fanciful. If my plates were visible the decision would be made for me.

I think about everything. I do a cursory search regarding costs for cats with heart conditions. Take off two of the zeros and it’d still be out of reach.

I think about the future we might have together if I just did nothing. I look round the bedsit. I think about tins of tuna. Beyond a better name there’s nothing I can offer.

Still, I can picture myself at the vet, having the choice offered to me. The vet would look at me, my sallow face, charity shop clothes, would know the answer, would already be mentally preparing the syringe or gas or whatever they use. Then I’d jump in; ‘I’ll get the money. I don’t know how sigh but I’ll get it.’ She’d probably cry, moved by this simple man’s noble sacrifice. And that would be what I’d become in the clinic. The broke guy who blew it all to save his cat. Such strength of mind and purpose. Maybe they’d use me in an advertisement.

Or let’s say I couldn’t pay and I had to let him go. Saying goodbye, the scene, the tears. When did I last cry? Would they watch me cry? Perhaps there is CCTV. I think about what song a director might play over the scene while it happened. You can get the ashes in an urn these days. It’d be a life event, a thing that had happened to me, a dimension to my life, an anecdote I’d share at dinner parties.

But there’d be no vet trips. A family like that gets their pets chipped. The vet would know. I’d be a thief to them, the infamous sick fuck sick cat thief.

So I drive him home. When we turn into a street two away from his own he has his front paws up on the dash, meerkating the neighbourhood through the windshield. I park a safe distance from the house. It’s a school day. There’re no cars in the drive. No lights on. It’s still a risk but I want to deliver him right the way home.

I place him on the drive. He wanders over to a bench on the small rectangle of grass that is the front garden. He looks back at me once. A dainty leap and he’s on the bench. He turns on the spot twice and lies down, his chin just over the edge of the seat. I walk back to the van.

I head home. I think about tomorrow.

I crush the box, toss the hoodie in the washing machine, make a tuna sandwich.