The cat and I

The cat and I had fallen out of love.We had been dear to one another, but now, after so many years, she hated me and I was short with her every meow. In her days she wanted a sort of stillness I couldn't muster - I wasn't ready to be old! My mind could not understand the wrinkles, the gray. Beneath that all I was a young man still. But the cat knew.
The cat was awake to every whisker that curled, and contentedly lay herself by the fire, relishing the rest that tired bones can demand. She licked her bowl clean, and herself, with stiff, practiced ease. But I could not contain myself in my old wing chair - I could not content myself with the silent, unnoticed, imminent immobility as I began to put myself to my final sleep. So I walked and paced and grumbled and drank, and the cat - the cat watched, blinking sleepliy from a middling perche near the warmth of the hearth.
Perhaps I had had a little too much to drink on evening, but I found myself stretched out in my favorite chair, my head quite fuzzy, and the cat close at hand, looking curiously at me. "How do you do it?" I demanded, my voice hoarse form my own quasi-stupor. I put out a soft fingertip and tapped her lightly on the nose.  "How - do - you - make it all so easy?" and I fell back a little in my chair, surprised at how the impact bothered my old shoulders.
"Harrumph," I said, and then reddened at the thought of how old my own behavior had become. I was a walking... I was interrupted by a polite mew and my cat's dainty foot on my lap as she stepped, still graceful, on my knee and then quickly lay down and began to lick a paw.
"You know," she said, nonchalantly, "it's really not as bad as all that."
On a dark, colorful gust of liquor fumes, I tried to compute her words. The dreaminess of my alcoholic hze took the edge from my surprise, and I looked at her bitter rather than shocked.
"My life isn't over," I stated back, slurring. I realized my nose was running slightly, and moved a sleeve to swipe it clean.
"Of course not," she scoffed, among a mouthful of fur that was particularly recalcitrant. "But you aren't dead yet, and you're not dying tomorrow." She stopped her self-bathing and, purring rustily, lolled back in practiced ease. "Just enjoy it," she said quietly, "You've earned your rest."
I looked at her, despairing. I didn't think I had. My life had been, ultimately, incredibly dull. Oh, the odd excitement, but for the most part, what had I done?
"You've lived, Charlie," she replied, her eyes half-closing. "That's enough for anyone."
I frowned. It wasn't enough for me.
She sighed and then, suddenly, her bright eyes, those eyes that had been closing slowly for years, burned into mine. A strange purr echoed in my ears.
I must have fallen to sleep. It was a drifting sensation: perhaps the alcohol had overwhelmed my aged nerves. My dreams were real and surreal as I had never felt before. Transported through times and spaces. I was in Paris, 1920, drinking absinthe. I was in Berlin, in Dublin, in Istanbul. I walked through a harem, I felt their sadness. I killed a man and watched the life leave him. I drowned. I climbed the peaks of Nepal, flew through the jungles on the waves of river wind. I toasted the great, toasted the wicked, and felt myself turn from bad to good to bad again. Again and again, the colors of life threw their panoply of activity about me; again and again, I saw the shadows, the light. I stood, exstatic, among the ruins of Greece, and as my body thrummed with a song to the gods, I spied the tail of a cat.
I never truly awoke. I surfaced on the carpet, the dying embers of the fire glowing by me, the cat curled by my side. How glad I was to be home, to be at rest. My heart still raced and my chest was tight. I reached to stroke the cat's small, curled spine. She looked up at me sleepily, and I started, realizing her eyes were completely white. She had gone blind. I stroked her gently, and then scooped her up tenderly in my arms.

"Time for bed," I said. "I am tired."