Yin yang cats design

The white one was called Mercy and the black one Sorrow, though the children had named them and nobody had asked the cats. They slept in the centre of the ring on the warm casing of the generator, and every night they curled so that the head of one fitted into the tail of the other, and the whole of them made a round shape, like a coin, or a sun, or the sawdust mark the clown drew when he was too tired to draw anything else. When Jonas tried to lift Sorrow into the cage for the last act, she went limp as wet rope and hissed until he set her down. Mercy simply walked back to the middle and lay down, and Sorrow followed her, and they made their circle again.

By November the wagons were sold. A man from the council came with a clipboard, measured the ring, and said the land would be flats by spring. Jonas offered the cats to a woman who kept geese, then to a boy with a van, but each time the cats were put in separate boxes they yowled until the boxes were opened, and the offers went cold.

On the last night, Jonas sat alone under the lamp with the canvas dripping overhead and watched the two of them turn over in the sawdust, one white and one black, nose to tail, until the circle closed. He did not have the heart to take the cage. He left the flap open and the lamp burning, and when the council man came in the morning the ring was empty except for two cats, asleep, in a perfect round.