Cat on Green Bench

The afternoon was wearing on, a soft haze hanging over the edges of the day, when I caught sight of a black cat lounging on a weathered green bench. There was something knowing in its gaze, something almost human. It looked at me—or through me—with yellow eyes that seemed to hold the secrets of the universe, or at least the indifference of a creature that had seen it all. The bench's peeling paint whispered of many such afternoons, of time passing, of countless others who had sat there before me, perhaps pondering their own existence, or maybe just thinking about what to have for dinner. The cat's sleek fur blended into the shadows, a sleek embodiment of solitude, perfectly at ease in the quiet world it inhabited, a silent observer of the carousel of life spinning relentlessly around it.

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