WHAT REMAINS WHEN LOVE GROWS QUIET
ALM No.94, October 2026
ESSAYS
As I curl up in my sunspot, I remember what once was. Back then, I moved through this house as though it had been built entirely for me. Every room was something to conquer, every dangling string a challenge, every open cupboard an invitation. I raced through the hallway for no reason at all, launched myself onto chairs twice my size and knocked things from tables simply to watch them fall. Wherever I went, I was noticed. I was picked up because I was there, photographed while I slept and called from across the room just to be held for a while. I was young, and being young seemed to make everything about me worthy of attention.
I did not notice when that began to change. Age arrived quietly, almost politely. First in the mornings, when my back took longer to loosen. Then in the small pause before a jump I once would have made without thinking. My legs became slower, my naps longer, and one afternoon I caught sight of a pale patch creeping through the fur around my mouth. Even my purr had changed. It used to come easily, light and quick. Now it begins somewhere deeper in my chest, rougher around the edges, as though it has travelled through every year before finally reaching the surface. I still recognise myself, but sometimes only after looking twice.
The house seemed to change with me. Or perhaps I had simply become still enough to notice. When I was young, love was loud. I was searched for if I disappeared beneath a chair. If I entered a room, heads turned. If I curled up beside someone, a hand almost always found me. Somewhere along the way, I became familiar. My name was still spoken, but not with the same excitement. Hands still reached for me, only less often. Sometimes I crossed an entire room without anyone looking up. For a while, I thought this meant the love itself had faded. Time has a strange way of making love look smaller. It takes something that once burned brightly and slowly teaches it to live without flames. The extraordinary becomes ordinary, and if you are not careful, you can mistake quietness for absence.
But growing older has made me notice other things too. My food still appears every morning before I ask. A door still opens when I sit beside it. A blanket is moved aside when I climb onto the bed, leaving the same warm place I have slept in for years. When I hesitate on the stairs, someone waits. When thunder rolls outside, my hiding place is still remembered. None of these things are announced anymore. No one gathers around to admire them. They simply happen. Perhaps love, after enough time, stops performing. Perhaps it becomes so familiar that it sinks into the rhythm of everyday life, almost invisible but still there.
I remember the first night I came here. Everything smelled wrong. The rooms felt enormous, every sound too sharp, and I hid beneath a chair because the world seemed much too big for me. Someone lay down on the floor nearby. No hand reached in to pull me out. No voice tried to force me closer. I was simply given time. Eventually, I moved toward them. One paw, then another. I remember that moment perfectly. Years later, no one needs to lie on the floor waiting for me anymore. I am already beside them. Maybe that is what time does to love. It removes the introductions, the urgency, the need to prove itself. What once had to be shown loudly becomes something quietly understood.
The sunlight has shifted now, and I should probably follow it. I consider getting up, then decide against it. At my age, I have learned that not everything needs to be chased. Footsteps cross the hallway, and I know them before I see anyone. They stop beside me. A shadow falls across the sun, and a hand reaches down behind my ears, finding the same spot it has known for years. My purr begins deep in my chest. “There you are,” a familiar voice says. And for a moment, I understand. The love was never gone. Its noise was. Time had taken the novelty, the constant need to stop and marvel, the bright intensity of something new. But the hand still knew where to scratch. I still knew those footsteps. There was still room for me. Maybe that is what happens to love when it lasts long enough.
Time demolishes its intensity, but not its essence.
I am slower now. Greyer. Quieter.
But I am still here.
And so is the love.
- Written from Max Cat’s perspective.
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