#coffeeshoppromts

It is the slight rise in your chest as you look out across a lake on a moonless night at the flicker of distant city lights. The melody of a softly strummed guitar and fingers dancing gracefully across a piano as stories of home are sung along. Gazing out over the grass fields belonging to the ghost town that you once called home.

It is foreign, yet feels so comfortable and safe.

One winter morning, just after I had opened the café for the day, I spotted a cat sitting outside in the gently falling snow. Thick black and brown fur that seemed to catch no snow, narrow yellow eyes that seemed so wise and weary, and a face littered with old scars. 

I had never seen this cat before, yet as it looked up and our gazes met I couldn’t help but feel that I knew it from somewhere. I felt the slight rise in my chest. The foreign familiarity...

I looked away as I turned to enter the kitchen, getting the idea to try and invite it in with a bit of deli turkey. However, when I returned and opened the door to set out the bowl, the cat was nowhere in sight. Hoping it would come back, I set the bowl out before returning inside. As the day went on and I served the usual customers and some newcomers, the cat did not return. I stalled while waiting to lock up for the night, but it did not return.

The next day, it had returned. It was sitting on the counter despite the front and back doors being securely locked. I fed it a bit of turkey from the kitchen and checked for any holes it might have crawled through, but there were none that lead outside. I let it stay in the café for the day, all the while wondering who this cat was, why the look in those eyes were so familiar and why I recognized the crossing patterns of the scars on its nose.

To this day, the cat stays in the café. It refuses to leave. I’m fine with it, and the vast majority of customers welcome its presence. Even now, every time I look at it, I still get that sense of familiarity, that strange nostalgia...