This story all started when I woke up too early one day and became so bored I decided to jog at the other side of the river. I could still remember it was a very cold dawn that time. Then while I finished some rounds at the riverbank (which wasn’t surprisingly packed with cyclists, other runners, and elder people doing group exercises near the skating rink), I saw a ginger cat at a corner not far away from me.  He was sitting in front of a compound gate.

Pause.

You see; I love cats. I’ve been rescuing, rehoming, and taking care of them for as long as I can remember. I do think cats are beyond superiority and they deserve to rule the world with humans as their slaves. I’m such a cat person that there’s this one guy – he was an acquaintance of my ex-boyfriend who tried to ask me on a date after my ex and I broke up, viva la friendship, amirite – who called me Bastet, you know, the Egyptian feline goddess.

Play.

I felt the cat looking at me. I knew he was calling me. But even if he didn’t want me to come near, I’d still come. So I did! I went closer and closer while meowing to him (it’s my special talent: I can imitate the voice of a cat) until I figured how large this cat was. The first thing this Garfield did was to walk around me then rub his body onto me. The cat meowed for food and I got none with me. I looked at my house at the other side of the river and told myself I was too exhausted to go to and fro. The cat has a white collar with his name etched in the heart plate. His name was Seoji. He wasn’t stray after all, or was he? So I scanned my surrounding and looked for any feeding station for stray cats. None, nada, nothing at all.

“Sorry bud, I don’t have food with me. But if you want, you can follow me to the other side, wait–” I paused, scratching the damp skin of my neck “–you can’t leave this place, what if someone looks out for you? Look, man, you got to hunt for the meanwhile, I promise, next time I jog here, I will bring you food just in case we meet each other again.”

“Is that cat bothering you, child?”

I shot a look up and saw an old lady walking towards me. From the short mix and match, I could guarantee Grandma was the one who just spoke. And again! “Don’t be fooled. His stomach is always full. All of the stray cats here are always full because some rich person takes great care of them.”

My eyes left Grandma’s and faced ahead of me. “Daebudo Pension Village…” I read what was written on the gate sign.  “It looks way more expensive and more peaceful in person.” I murmured.

“You don’t look familiar. Where you from?”

I pointed at my apartment building. “I’m from the other side of the river. Do you know everyone who lives on this side?”

“Oh yes, them and their parents, and their grandparents and great grandparents. They all come and go. But,” she gazed inside the quiet subdivision, “I’ve never seen the person who feeds these stray cats. I can only guess this person arrived here when more cats started flooding this side of the river.”

The cat walked away from me and entered the subdivision at his own will. “Looks like fatso wants to show you their hotspot.” Grandma snorted before bidding a small farewell to me.

Since the gates were wide open and there were no guards around, I quietly followed the cat. Soon, the cat stopped to smell the head of another cat in front of him, wearing the same white collar. That happened again and again as Seoji met more cats along the way. Maybe he whispered to the other cats I didn’t mean harm. Again, all the cats we passed by were wearing white collars.

Seoji led me in front of a colorful yet chic modern house a few blocks down the road. The space in front of the house was huge and there loitered an insurmountable amount of cats with tipped ears and white collars, all from different age brackets and colors and possibly, even breeds. Cats everywhere: cats at the contemporary swing set, cats interpolating the crysta