The nest is empty. The boy lives downtown, a block from the firehouse where he volunteers. When a call comes out, via cell phone now rather than scanner, he can report in mere minutes, ready to save a home or a life. The girl moved to Wyoming, fighting fires of her own. Forests, not structures, and when no fires burn nearby, she works to fireproof Grand Teton Nation Park.

Susan and I live alone in our now-too-big house with our cat. We named him for the drummer of a favorite band who died the day the cat joined our lives. In cat years, he is now as old as me. And like me, he still has a playful streak, but prefers to laze around and make himself comfortable on whatever soft surface is nearby.

At bedtime, after Susan and I complete our pre-lights-out banter, the cat jumps on the bed, more a clawing climb than a clean hop for the past year or so, and settles down between our pillows. I stroke his chest for a minute or so before he pins my hand to the bed with his paw and lies on top of it. We sleep like this for the first few hours of the night.

When nature calls, as it invariably does for a sixty-tree year old man, I return to bed and flip to my other side, much like I’m a hamburger on a grill, and I want to cook evenly. While I enter the twilight between reality and dreams, I feel the cat gingerly walk across my pillow towards the side table that holds my alarm clock, hearing aids, and glasses while I sleep. I open an eye just to make sure, and yes, he sits on the table staring down at me, looking for all the world like a buzzard awaiting the death knell of his prey.

I close my eye and drop off to sleep knowing that in a matter of minutes, he will reach out and poke my cheek with his paw. This used to piss me off until I realized that every time I find him somewhere in my house, curled and sound asleep, I jam my nose into his neck and give him a kiss. He takes it in stride, sometimes dropping immediately back to sleep, and sometimes using it as a cue to begin an elaborate bath, licking each part of his body over the next forty-five minutes.

Susan shakes her head at the two of us, thinking we’re a couple of morons. She has her own bonding sessions that usually include brushes and combs, stringy cat toys, or running faucets to drink from. But in bed he’s all mine, including when he begins mewing hours before dawn. Remarkably I’m the only one who hears this, even though my hearing aids are safely stowed and charging overnight. Otherwise, Susan can hear a whisper from the next room.

Eventually, I get out of bed, lock the cat out of the bedroom. When I return to bed, I flip over once more, in the position I started the night, which is probably all the cat really wanted in the first place.

Image: Tommy staring up at an owl in a branch, who in turn is staring down at him.