Jake the Cat After I have made the bed Jake leaves me his toy This is his devotion and gift to me in the early morning. Jake leaves me his toy after I have left for work. Maybe he is hoping I’ll return? So, he waits. I find the toy Jake has left for me when I return home and it reminds me that I left early in the morning and he has been home all day sharing his toy. -Corinne Walsh Missy We knew she hadn’t long to live when she couldn’t move from the corner of the kitchen floor the night before she died, but it was still a shock when a neighbour knocked on the door next day to ask if we had a cat, a white one? Somehow she’d got outside to the pavement, not the road, thank goodness. Rescued by the RSPCA, a tear in her ear, we never guessed she’d last sixteen years. Her painful paws couldn’t carry her any further, her claws spiralled like fossils, they’d kept growing as she grew too old to have them cut. -Peter J. Donnelly Seven Species First there was Missy the mongrel from the RSPCA, at least 144 in cat years when she passed away. Then stray Kitty, dark as a witch’s cat with a kink in her tail who brought in a rat. Tiger the Tabbie was chalk to black Lilly’s cheese, as different as Biscuit, Grandma’s ginger tom from Heathcliff, her Siamese. Once white Willow goes there’ll be no more cats. I’d have one myself if I didn’t live in a flat. -Peter J. Donnelly Sunil Sharma tries to create a Murakami-laced moment by outlining a late afternoon conversation between strangers. The protagonist, a filmmaker find a subject of instant interest in a coconut-seller who seems unnaturally knowledgeable about Haruki Murakami. He tells an inspiring story of triumphing over evil and disappears completely (with his coconut stall) the next day. Sharma catcher his reader off-guard, drawing them in, warming their hearts and leaving them with a bewildered look on their faces. – Shreya, The Bombay Review The story appears in The Bombay Review: https://thebombayreview.com/2020/05/26/cats-murakami-and-a-mystery-encounter-sunil-sharma/ Another cat story by Sunil appears in Different Truths.

The Lost Catwoman

-Sunil Sharma Cat Called Nothing JPS calls me Nothing. (Apologies to Jean-Paul Sartre) Catness carries being at its heart. I am condemned to be free. If I tremble at the slightest noise, If each creak announces me a look. This is because I am already in the state Of being-looked-at. Catness haunts being. Hell is other people. Catness lies coiled at the heart of being like a worm. Consciousness is a being, the nature of which is to be conscious of the Catness of its being. Bios And Links -Corinne Walsh As a small child Corinne Walsh wrote little notes and left them where people might accidentally find them, in mailboxes, in pockets, even under rocks. Composing thoughts and writing down feelings only to cast them out into the world started as a child’s experiment in expression, and 50 years later the habit survives. -Sunil Sharma a senior academic and author-freelance journalist from the suburban Mumbai, India. He has published 21 books so far, some of which are solo efforts and some joint. He edits Setu: http://www.setumag.com/p/setu-home.html -Peter J. Donnelly lives in York where he works as a hospital secretary.  He has a degree in English Literature and a MA in Creative Writing from the University of Wales Lampeter. He has been published in various magazines and anthologies including One Hand Clapping, Dreich,  High Window, Southlight and Writer’s Egg.  He came second in the Ripon Poetry Festival competition and was a joint runner up in the Buzzwords open poetry competition in 2020.