# The Bookshop Cat

She has never read a single book, but she's slept on all of them. The customers think she's decoration—a living aesthetic choice, draped across the poetry section like a fur-covered bookmark.

They don't know what she knows.

She knows which regulars come to browse and which come to hide. She knows the woman in Thursday afternoons needs the back corner more than she needs literature. She knows the teenager who pretends to look at graphic novels is actually reading the spines in self-help, too embarrassed to pull one down.

The owner calls her Mouse, which is ironic, or perhaps aspirational. She hasn't caught anything in years. She doesn't need to. Her job is to make the silence feel inhabited, to give permission for staying too long.

When the shop closes, she moves to the window. Watches the street empty. Waits for morning, when the door will open, and she can resume her work of holding space.