She is three times her size when we meet. Grown fat and slow with the passage of time. I enter slowly, unsure about this place I called home for nine years, unsure about how she will react to seeing me. Will she smell me out? Will she recognize my squeaky voice calling her out of her hiding place under the bed?

I push my overfull suitcase to a familiar corner. I move toward the kitchen, perusing the empty space, peeking inside the cupboards for a glass. Fortunately, the previous tenants have left two behind. Also some dishwashing liquid and a brush. I run the water, it takes its time to get cold. I know how to work this tap, I know how long it will take to cool. I drink freezing fresh Icelandic water, in my home, at last.

I moved to this apartment in 2004. At that time it was not in the best of shape –its kitchen was out of the 70s, with a freestanding ceramic stove and a relic refrigerator from the decade when Icelanders first got electricity. The floors were laminate and had weathered down to a non-colour. The bathroom had an uneven concrete floor.

After years of enduring the flat in this condition, cooking at that old stove (I once cooked a meal for 19 people on that stove), almost slipping each time I showered in the creaky tiny bath tub, the flat went through a complete overhaul. The year was 2008. The kitchen was re-modeled and made Ikea a little richer on our account that year. I finally had a steel counter top, I had an induction worktop and I had the orange back splash I always wanted.

The bathroom stood as a testimony to my interior design skills. Clad in white tile and grey grouting, with mirrored fitted cupboards, it was old-school cool. The floors were now bleached oak parquet, the dining room converted to a master bedroom, complete with the most comfortable lounge chair in the world.

Through the years I fixed all the electricity, got the skirting changed, re-glued old wires, fixed crown moldings, installed a new front door.

Through these years I also went from being married to single, I saw my only child grow into a mini-adult, escorted him to his first days at school and many days through the snow that covered the ground each winter. I lost a beloved grandparent far away in another continent. I switched jobs, said several goodbyes to friends, welcomed new ones.

I also got a little kitten. My son named her Galaxy after his favourite Mario game.

Galaxy stayed with us as long as we stayed in Iceland. When we moved, the new tenants agreed to look after her until our return. One year changed into two, and now most likely we will not return to stay here, not for the foreseeable future at least.

We moved to Mumbai to be with family there, and then in 2014 to Dubai. Only 6 months ago I visited Iceland. I dropped in on my tenants, the flat I loved changed somewhat with their stuff now. Galaxy refusing to leave her spot under the bed, her hidey haven from strange visitors. The tenants did manage to pry her out. They gave her to me, she stayed for all of 30 seconds before jumping off my knee, clearly uninterested. Sauntered away like the diva she has always been. It hurt like hell deep in my heart.

I looked after Galaxy for four years, clambered up a tree with treats in order to bring her down, scraped my cheek on the fender of a car to get her out from underneath. I loved her and cared for her, staying awake a night or two when she didn’t return home. And she rejected me when I visited. Or so I thought for that minute when she didn’t want anything to do with me. I left the apartment, a little out of my body, a little in grief. So much had changed around me and inside me, but there was still only so much I could bear.

When I had loved her so completely, why had she still not even acknowledged me? What was the lesson for me? Did I need to let her go, let her be? With tears I accepted she had moved on, and she was well looked after, and she was no longer mine. I had left her first.

As I go wash my hands in my pristine white bathroom I notice the tenants have also been kind enough to leave a bottle of hand soap and some extra toilet roll. I wander around the empty rooms, absorbing the stillness, the quiet of my years collected in the walls. And then she comes, gingerly sniffing my ankle. I slide to the floor and allow myself to be reintroduced to her in this field of silence between us. I reach out and she comes quickly, breaking the void with loud meows. She rubs herself all over my outstretched arms. Uncalled, unexpected tears spring to my eyes. Love has returned.

Love never goes. Love stays, sometimes hibernating, sometimes slinking into a spot where it can warm itself, away from undeserving life. At times, love waits, patiently eking out an existence while people go about their business. Love knows when to come forth: sometimes eagerly, with aggressive heat. Sometimes its slow burn kicks the flame up several notches only at the right time.

Galaxy is teaching me that love is patient, that love is kind, but has high standards. That love comes only when love knows you will see it. That love resounds in your heart at the fraction of the beat when you’re ready to hear it. Buried deep in a fox hole, it will come in search of you, you will never find it if you dig, covered in the sweat of your own desires.

Galaxy is the type of cat that’s at once infuriating and cute. I will miss her, as she will go to my previous tenants who love her and want to take her with them after I leave this flat.

The flat is on sale, and perhaps it will sell, perhaps it will be rented out again. I don’t know yet. I only know that all my years of love in Iceland return to me when they see me ready, not when I want them to.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hello! I’m Peri Desai

I’m Peri, welcome to my space. In it you will find stuff that moves me, maddens me, captures my attention, makes me question its truth. You will read what makes me curious, annoyed, energized, joyful, vulnerable.