Gato

Gato is the stray cat Shmuel meets on a winter night in Jerusalem, a small, hungry animal whose approach and retreat give physical form to the loneliness Shmuel has been trying to call a choice. The encounter is brief and offers no rescue: Shmuel can touch the cat, but cannot feed it, and the cat ultimately disappears into the street’s darkness.

Appearance and Circumstances

The cat first appears curled between two rubbish bins, frozen, thin, and famished, its ribs visible and its tail tucked between its legs. It watches Shmuel with bright, alert eyes, ready to bolt. The animal’s exposed hunger makes the encounter concrete: it is not an abstract emblem of solitude but a vulnerable creature seeking warmth and wary of the person who has noticed it.

Shmuel stops and feels a surge of pity, the kind of compassion he says seldom leads him to act. In his thoughts, he recognizes a likeness between them: both are alone in the darkness and rain, looking for warmth that seems to move farther away the more they search. He approaches with his cane extended. The cat stays by the bins, arches its back, bristles, shows its teeth, and hisses twice in warning. Its fear is not dispelled merely because Shmuel feels sympathy.

An Exchange of Caution and Trust

A gunshot and then a short, sharper burst of gunfire break into the encounter. In this divided city, Shmuel cannot tell where the shots come from; the Israeli part of Jerusalem is bordered on three sides by the Jordanian part, and the frontier is lined with fortified trenches, barbed wire, concrete walls, and minefields. After the shooting, the winter-night silence returns. Shmuel crouches and reaches toward the cat, and the animal unexpectedly takes three or four cautious steps closer, sniffing the air as its whiskers move in the streetlamp’s light.

The cat’s approach is tentative rather than tame. Its eyes shine, its tail rises, and its light, flexible steps seem almost dance-like as it inspects the lone stranger. Shmuel imagines that it may remember once receiving food from someone’s fingers. He regrets having brought nothing: there was dried cheese in the refrigerator, and he might have cooked an egg before leaving. He apologizes quietly and says that he has nothing to give it. The cat is not persuaded by the words, but it comes close enough to smell his fingertips.

Contact and Departure

Instead of turning away, the cat rubs one side of its head against Shmuel’s fingers and gives a brief, affecting meow. Shmuel is so moved that he holds his hand still, allowing the cat to continue. He then gathers the courage to set down his cane and stroke its head and back, gently scratching its neck and the place beneath its ears. The cat is small, almost kitten-sized, with white and gray fur; under his hand it is warm and soft. It responds with a long, light purr and rubs its cheek against his fingers again.

The contact lasts only a moment. The cat rubs twice against Shmuel’s bent leg, meows softly once more, changes its mind, and walks away without looking back. It vanishes among the rubbish bins with light, springy, tiger-like steps. Its departure neither cancels the tenderness of the exchange nor turns it into a lasting bond: the cat chooses the moment of approach and the moment of leaving.

Narrative Significance

The encounter follows Shmuel’s inward recognition that, despite his intention to isolate himself, his heart remains below, in the kitchen or at Atalia’s closed door. The cat gives that contradiction a visible, vulnerable counterpart. Shmuel addresses it inwardly as a fellow solitary seeker of warmth, but the animal remains more than a mirror: it is hungry, cautious, responsive to touch, and free to withdraw. His compassion becomes action, though only briefly and without the food he wishes he had brought.

The surrounding gunfire places this small exchange within Jerusalem’s militarized nocturnal landscape. The cat’s movement from defensive warning to touch occurs after the shots fall silent; human violence is heard nearby, while trust is negotiated through fingers, a lowered cane, and a purr. Yet the scene does not claim that gentleness repairs the larger danger or solves Shmuel’s solitude. The cat leaves, and Shmuel continues on through the city. What remains is a short encounter in which both loneliness and the possibility of contact are real, but neither is made permanent.