The way things are heard.

My cat cries at the door, wailing a meow to be let out into the hallway to go and see if the new kitten was doing something fascinating, touching his stuff, eating from his two bowls of food or drinking from his two bowls of water or worse yet playing with his kids.

Sound can be deceptive as it reverberates inside the ear and is processed by a brain chock-a block- full of memories and thoughts.
For a millisecond, the longing meow sounded to me like the atavistic cry of my grandmother, at one of her most difficult moments.
After her stroke, the visiting nurse would try and stretch out Nana's hand which had clawed inwards, tilted towards her chest in permanent foetal position. She cradled it there protectively.

Nana's eyes were so blue as she looked up at the nurse, her mouth slack at one side, words no longer obeying her mind or mouth.
She wailed that sound of pain or perhaps it was a breathless sigh of anguish, as she realized what had become of her, what had become of her right hand... That she was now expected to exist this way..from now on...
The hand that had stirred pots of food for her family, held her children as they crossed the streets in wartime London, the hand that had changed bandages and dispensed medications when she was a nurse, was no longer working right.

She had more recently used the hands I loved so well, to take me on red buses to town, where we went shopping. She hugged me and gave me little sips of coffee from her delicate china cups. She had made us butter cupcakes with icing and the best fudge I had ever tasted.
She also used those hands to play bridge with her dear 'feline obsessed' friends Molly and Teddy. they used tiny pencils and pads and looked tensely at their cards. She would tap out angry letters to errant politicians on her typwriter and tersely send them. She sewed me dresses on her little sewing machine, and read her newspapers on her bed in the morning.
Now her right hand had all but died away, this integral part of her.
she didn't try for long, the nurse and subtly shook her head. From behind her, I shook my head too.
In this space and time, the image faded as i shook my head to clear it and opened the door into the hallway. The cat looked at me with his falcon eyes and sat down in the doorway casually, then satisfied the kitten was curled up into a tiny pepper colored ball in the bathroom, walked back into the room and lay down.