Cat reaching for butterflies on an ankle

The cat has taken up residence on the wall by booth three, the one with the cracked blue paint. Nobody owns her. The lorry drivers feed her sardines from their flasks and the new recruits call her Inspector, which she accepts as her due. This morning she sat with her tail curled neatly along the stones and lifted one paw towards the hedge, where two butterflies were tumbling over the wire.

I have watched this for three weeks now. The butterflies come up from the valley in pairs, pale blue, and they do not stop at the barrier. They do not queue. They drift across the white line painted on the tarmac as if it were only chalk, and the cat reaches for them with a patience that makes me think she has done the sums and found the arithmetic in her favour.

Yesterday Sergeant Oduya asked me to log every crossing for the regional report. I wrote down forty-two vehicles, three refused, one dog with a tag I could not read. Under "other" I wrote nothing, because what would I put? Two butterflies, one cat, one paw held in the air for a full minute before it came down.

Last night I walked out to the wall with my torch and the cat did not run. She watched the blue things go over the fence and back again, and I found myself lifting my hand too. Nobody stamped anything. I am sending you this letter by the ordinary post, with a stamp I bought at the kiosk, and I am writing your name in full because I want it to cross.