Where Are You at Home?
A street cat found me on Siam Square in Bangkok fifteen years ago.
I noticed her near the Lido cinema. She had that look street animals get when they have already decided something and are just waiting for you to catch up. She followed me. She was talking to me. Not desperately. Calmly. As if I was late for an appointment.
I told myself I would keep her for two weeks. Long enough to find someone sensible. Someone settled. Someone who knew how to do things properly. Fifteen years later she is still here. In another country. In the snow.
She had no home when we met. No territory worth defending. But she was never homeless in the way humans mean it. She didn’t seem lost. She just needed one thing to orient herself around. Me.
I think, to this day, she treats home as a moving object. When I leave the house, she follows. When I go shopping, she waits in front of the supermarket. On the way back, she walks ten meters behind me. When I look over my shoulder, she pretends not to follow me.
Inside, she mirrors my gravity. Bedroom, living room, kitchen. Wherever I settle, she settles. When I shower or take a bath, she sits on a shelf, patient, watching.
Most people think home is a place. A building. A village. A childhood kitchen frozen somewhere in memory. They talk about roots, walls, addresses, ownership. They confuse stability with immobility.
Lido never did.
For her, home is not where things are stored.
It is where presence is.
Where something familiar is breathing nearby.
I have lived in many places. Countries. Languages. Temporary lives. Some of them looked impressive from the outside. Some of them were nothing more than simple rooms with a bed and a window. What made these lives livable was never the structure. It was whether I could exhale without explaining myself.
Lido understood this long before I did.
She did not need walls.
She did not need a roof.
She needed continuity.
Someone whose presence was predictable.
Someone who stayed themself from room to room.
That is what home is.
Not nostalgia.
Not property.
Not childhood memories.
Home is where you don’t have to perform.
Where your body knows the rules.
Where you are not bracing for impact.
Home is a relationship.