in the backyards, with your friends of late

There's a storefront on Bloor Street, a little west of Ossington, that has a cat and a scratching post in the window. A cat and a scratching post, and nothing else. In fact, it isn't even a store. It's just a big empty window with a cat in it.

A few days ago, I was walking that sidewalk stretch, as I do a dozen times a week, looking for the cat in the window, but I couldn't find it. The store, the cat, the scratching post: everything had vanished from Bloor. It took me a few minutes to finally figure out what I was looking for. The storefront was completely camoflaged; it had been covered over with a wall of wood for renovations. Okay, so that made sense. But--

what about the cat?

Today, finally, there was a small handwritten note taped to the wood in front of the store:

"THE CAT IS FINE SHE STAYS IN THE HOUSE"