If there is a God of cats, he must have woken up that day with a peculiar sense of humor.
He had taken that hungry little bastard and planted him outside the entrance to a supermarket.
Not beside a dumpster.
Not in an alley.
Not behind a fish market run by a half-blind old man senile enough to let a sardine get stolen.
Outside a supermarket.
The fucking promised land of food.
Behind the glass were shelves crammed with meat, tuna, cookies, chicken, cold cuts, cheese, and enough brightly colored shit to feed an army through a nuclear winter.
In front of the glass sat him.
Waiting.
With nothing.
Only a few inches separated him from all that abundance. One door, two panes of glass, and one of those invisible rules invented by human beings to decide who gets to enter and who has to stay outside.
The cat had no money.
He had no loyalty card.
He had not downloaded the app to collect fucking points.
So he waited.
He did not look desperate.
Desperation is something human beings like to see only when it is theatrical enough to make them feel virtuous. They want protruding ribs, dying eyes, perhaps a little rain in the background. If you absolutely have to suffer, at least try to make it photogenic.
He, on the other hand, was simply a hungry cat.
And hunger does not need to audition.
He sat upright before the entrance, his tail tucked beside his paws, wearing the dignified expression of a doorman who has been fired from the building but keeps watch anyway.
He watched people go in.
Then he watched them come out.
He had chosen his spot well.
Marketing departments spend millions studying consumer behavior. He had figured it all out without a degree or a single corporate meeting:
do not ask the ones walking in empty-handed.
Wait for the ones coming out with full bags.
Faces can lie.
Bags cannot.
The door would open and, for a few seconds, the smell of food drifted out of the store.
Then it closed again.
Opened.
Closed.
Each time, paradise showed him what it contained and then promptly slammed the glass in his face.
Torture designed with fluorescent lighting and weekly specials.
Inside, people chose among fifteen kinds of cookies, compared yogurt prices, and bought family-size portions for families that had probably stopped speaking years ago.
Outside, he asked for one thing.
Something to eat.
No special preferences.
No allergies invented after reading three articles online.
No review to leave.
Food.
A need so simple it seemed almost vulgar in a world that has to complicate everything before assigning it a price.
People passed beside him.
Some looked at him.
Others made that small sideways motion with one foot, the elegant gesture human beings use to avoid what they do not want to see without having to admit they saw it.
They were not necessarily bad people.
Almost no one thinks of themselves as bad.
They were in a hurry.
They had calls to make, dinners to cook, messages not to answer, and terribly important lives to drag all the way to the parking lot.
Indifference rarely has the face of a monster.
Usually it wears clean clothes, stares at its phone, and says it does not have time.
The cat, however, did not appear willing to accept the role of furniture.
He waited.
He watched.
He selected a passerby.
A man who had just made it through the door and probably thought he had finished his shopping without any further pain in the ass.
The cat raised his head.
Opened his mouth.
And called to him.
“Hey.”
The passerby kept walking.
“Hey, asshole. Yeah, I’m talking to you.”
Of course, I cannot know what he really said.
Humans insist that animals cannot speak. It is one of our favorite lies, along with “I’m fine,” “I’ll call you,” and “I have read and accepted the terms of service.”
Animals absolutely do speak.
We are the ones who demand subtitles, because understanding would force us to do something.
Translated from the universal language of hunger, that meow must have sounded something like this:
“You just bought enough stuff to fill the trunk of a car. There are probably at least three things in that bag that you will forget in the refrigerator until they begin developing a civilization of their own.
One can would be enough for me.
A piece of chicken.
Something you have not already half-chewed and thrown on the ground.
I am not asking you to adopt me, love me forever, or let me sleep on your pillow while I slowly destroy your couch.
I am asking you to remember that I exist.”
Maybe the passerby heard him.
Maybe he did not.
The photograph does not say.
It shows only the cat with his head raised, mouth open, and that reflection in the glass that seems to throw his own cry back at him.
As though even the supermarket refused to answer and merely returned his voice.
I was there with my camera.
And I was taking pictures.
That is a strange thing too.
You see something that strikes you, raise the camera, and place a lens between yourself and the shit of the world. You set the shutter speed, the aperture, the focus. You turn a need into a composition and, for a few seconds, can pretend your only job is to observe.
Photography is also this.
An elegant way to stand still.
But those two images already told the whole story.
In the first, the cat waited.
In the second, he had stopped waiting quietly.
Between one frame and the next lay the entire biography of hunger.
First, you preserve your dignity.
Then you hope someone notices you.
Finally, you open your mouth and call to a perfect stranger, because dignity is a beautiful thing until your stomach starts growling.
Hunger makes everyone honest.
It does not care about your pride, your story, or how much you would have preferred to manage on your own.
Hunger arrives and says:
“Now ask.”
And you ask.
Once.
Twice.
Ten times.
Until someone stops or until you have no voice left.
I do not know who listened to that cat.
Maybe the passerby turned back.
Maybe a woman came out carrying a package of food and opened it beside the door for him.
Maybe the cat remained there until evening, trusting statistics and the weakness of some human being less busy than the others.
Photographs do not give answers.
They hold the question still.
And so he will remain forever in front of that door, while anyone looking at these pictures can decide on which side of the glass they recognize themselves.
Inside, there was everything.
Outside, a living creature was asking for almost nothing.
That is the part that fucks you up.
Not poverty.
Not hunger.
The ridiculous distance between those who possess more than they can consume and those who have to cry out for a crumb.
A few inches.
An automatic door.
One step almost no one felt like taking.
That cat, however, understood how the world works better than many of us do.
He was not asking for justice.
Justice is a luxury invented by people who have already eaten dinner.
He was asking for food.
He had chosen the place.
He had studied the people.
And whenever he spotted one whose bags looked full enough, he raised his head and launched his small call into the noise of the city.
“Hey, asshole.”
“Do not pretend you didn’t see me.”
Behind him, thousands of packages bore a name, a price, and a barcode.
Outside, hunger needed only one word.
Meow.
And no one could honestly say they had not understood.
In the end, I lowered my camera.
I walked into that supermarket without needing to buy a fucking thing for myself. I took a can, paid for it, and went back outside.
I opened it in front of him.
He did not thank me, of course. Cats have enough dignity not to perform gratitude for the reassurance of human beings. He lowered his head and began to eat.
I had not defeated world hunger.
I had not saved anyone.
I had merely fed one cat for one night.
A small thing.
But in that moment, to him, it was the only thing that mattered.