A story about friendship, ordinary days, and the ones who remain part of us

by Ezra Nadav

Long before Pip knew that Willow Glen was full of stories, there was Diego.

Diego was a black cat with bright eyes, a sleek coat, and a particular talent for finding the warmest patch of sunlight anywhere in the forest.

He had known Pip for so long that neither of them could remember exactly when they had become friends.

Perhaps that was because neither of them had ever decided to become friends in the first place. There had been no particular moment when one had looked at the other and announced that this was what they were now.

They had simply spent enough time together that eventually it became difficult to remember a time when they hadn’t.

Pip remembered being wary of him at first.

This seemed reasonable.

Pip was, after all, a squirrel.

Diego was, very definitely, a cat.

The first time Pip saw him beneath Oak Hallow, Diego was stretched across a patch of grass with his eyes closed.

Pip watched from a branch high above.

Diego opened one eye.

“You can come down,” he said.

“I think I’ll stay here.”

“Suit yourself.”

Diego closed his eye again.

Pip waited.

Nothing happened.

Eventually Pip climbed down two branches.

Diego didn’t move.

Pip came down another.

Still nothing.

Finally Pip sat on the lowest branch and studied him.

“Aren’t cats supposed to chase squirrels?”

Diego opened one eye again.

“That sounds exhausting.”

Pip considered this.

It was difficult to argue with.

The next afternoon, Diego came back.

And the afternoon after that.

Eventually Pip stopped watching him from the branches.

⸻

There were animals in Willow Glen who assumed Pip and Diego must have shared wonderful adventures.

They hadn’t.

Mostly, they shared afternoons.

Diego would arrive sometime after the sun had moved across the clearing and settle beneath Oak Hallow.

Pip would bring down a book.

Sometimes he read aloud.

Sometimes Diego listened.

Sometimes Diego fell asleep halfway through.

“You weren’t listening,” Pip would complain.

“I was listening.”

“What was the last thing I read?”

Diego would stretch one paw forward.

“The squirrel was worried about something.”

“There isn’t a squirrel in this book.”

“Then I wasn’t listening.”

Pip would shake his head and continue reading.

On colder afternoons, Pip sometimes sat beside Diego, leaning against his warm black fur.

On warmer ones, they found shade.

They talked about important things occasionally.

Mostly they didn’t.

That was one of the things Pip liked most about Diego.

Silence never needed explaining.

Neither did friendship, for that matter.

Pip never had to wonder whether Diego wanted him there. Diego never seemed concerned about whether Pip had anything interesting to say. There was no expectation that they should make something of their time together.

They could simply occupy the same afternoon.

Pip didn’t know then how rare that was.

⸻

Diego had another world beyond Willow Glen.

There was a house and a garden and other animals, and most importantly, there was his human.

Diego talked about his human often.

Usually with the resigned affection cats reserve for creatures they consider both beloved and slightly incompetent.

“He spent the entire morning staring at the glowing rectangle again,” Diego told Pip once.

“Why?”

“Work.”

“What’s work?”

“I’m not entirely sure. He taps things, mutters occasionally, and then makes coffee.”

Pip thought about this.

“That doesn’t sound very interesting.”

“It isn’t.”

“Then why do you stay with him?”

Diego looked genuinely confused by the question.

“Because he’s there.”

Pip waited for more.

There wasn’t any.

Another afternoon, Diego mentioned that his human had worked through lunch.

“You should remind him to eat.”

“I did.”

“How?”

“I sat on him.”

Pip laughed.

Diego looked pleased with himself.

It was clear to Pip that Diego loved his human very much.

Diego never used those words.

He didn’t need to.

There are, Pip would eventually learn, some kinds of love that announce themselves constantly without ever saying their own name.

They are there in the chair beside a desk.

In following someone from one room to another for no apparent reason.

In knowing the rhythm of another creature’s day so completely that their routine becomes part of your own.

Diego seemed to understand this long before Pip did.

⸻

Years passed in the quiet way years often do when nobody is counting them.

There were winters beneath Oak Hallow and summers beside the creek.

There were books.

There were naps.

There were days when Pip had much to say and Diego listened.

There were days when Pip had nothing to say and Diego stayed anyway.

Other animals came into Pip’s life.

Rowan appeared with his complicated relationship with truth.

Marek taught Pip about small ripples.

Elin and Ash made their home near the brambles.

Willow Glen grew larger around him.

But Diego remained something different.

He had known Pip before all of them.

Before Pip had become the squirrel animals visited when they needed a book, a conversation, or simply somewhere quiet to sit.

Diego had known him when Pip was mostly just Pip.

And for a very long time, Diego had been his best friend.

Truthfully, for much of that time, he had been Pip’s only one.

Neither of them ever discussed this.

Some things become important without needing to be named.

Perhaps they become important precisely because they never needed naming in the first place.

⸻

Then Liora appeared.

Diego met her one afternoon beneath Oak Hallow.

Pip and Liora had been walking back from the creek, discussing whether old trees recognised the animals who had climbed them as children.

Diego was lying in his usual patch of sunlight.

Liora stopped.

“Is that Diego?”

Diego opened one eye.

Pip looked surprised.

“You’ve heard of him?”

“Of course I’ve heard of Diego.”

Diego opened the other eye.

“I like her.”

“You haven’t even met her,” Pip said.

Diego stood, stretched slowly, and introduced himself.

The three of them spent the afternoon beneath Oak Hallow.

Nothing remarkable happened.

They talked.

Liora rearranged three fallen acorns without noticing she was doing it.

Pip disappeared into a long explanation about something he had read.

Diego fell asleep.

It was, Pip thought later, an entirely ordinary afternoon.

Which was probably why it mattered so much.

Later, after Liora had gone home, Pip sat beside him.

Diego’s eyes remained closed.

“She understands your quiet,” he said.

Pip looked at him.

“We’ve only just met.”

Diego’s tail moved once through the grass.

“I didn’t say anything about how long you’ve known her.”

Pip rolled his eyes.

Diego went back to sleep.

Pip never asked him what he meant.

He suspected Diego would have found the question unnecessary anyway.

⸻

Then, one morning, Diego didn’t come.

Pip didn’t think much of it.

Diego had another life, after all.

The next afternoon, Pip placed his book beside him and waited.

Diego didn’t come then either.

By the third day, Pip found himself looking toward the path whenever leaves moved.

On the fourth, he stopped pretending he wasn’t waiting.

The news eventually reached Oak Hallow quietly.

Diego had become very sick.

His humans had stayed with him.

And Diego had passed away.

For a long time, Pip said nothing.

There didn’t seem to be a sentence large enough for what had happened.

So he sat beneath Oak Hallow in Diego’s patch of sunlight.

The grass looked exactly the same.

That seemed wrong somehow.

Pip wasn’t sure what he expected the forest to do with news like that.

Perhaps the leaves should have stopped moving.

Perhaps the birds should have known.

Perhaps the creek might have gone quiet for just a moment.

Instead, the creek still moved.

Birds still argued noisily in the branches.

Somewhere nearby, a young rabbit laughed.

Willow Glen had continued.

Pip wasn’t sure how it knew how.

⸻

The hardest part came afterwards.

Not always in the moments Pip expected.

It was in the ordinary ones.

Pip would open a book and think, Diego would hate this one.

He would find an especially warm patch of sunlight and instinctively look toward it.

At certain times of the afternoon, he would expect to hear familiar paws beneath Oak Hallow.

Sometimes he would catch himself listening for them.

Sometimes Pip would remember something funny Diego had done and smile.

Then he would remember.

Those moments were particularly strange.

Because missing Diego did not always feel like sadness.

Sometimes it felt like habit with nowhere to go.

For years, Pip had thought friendship lived in the important things.

The conversations you remembered.

The adventures.

The days something happened.

Now he began to understand that much of his friendship with Diego had been made from days when nothing happened at all.

Afternoons reading.

Naps beneath Oak Hallow.

Walking nowhere in particular.

Being together without needing a reason.

All those afternoons Pip had never thought to remember because he had assumed there would always be another one.

At the time, those days had seemed ordinary.

Now Pip would have given almost anything for one more of them.

Perhaps, Pip thought, this was one of the strange things about loving someone.

You rarely know which moments will become precious while you are living them.

Most of the time they just feel like Tuesday.

⸻

One afternoon, Liora found him sitting beneath Oak Hallow.

She didn’t ask whether he was all right.

Pip was grateful for that.

She simply sat beside him.

For a while they watched sunlight move slowly across the clearing.

“Diego used to sleep there,” Pip eventually said.

“I know.”

“He could sleep for hours.”

Liora smiled.

“He seemed very talented at it.”

“He was.”

Pip looked at the empty patch of grass.

“He was my friend before anyone else here really knew me.”

Liora didn’t answer immediately.

Then she rested her paw beside his.

Pip understood something in that moment.

Loving Liora did not make the place Diego had occupied smaller.

Having other friends did not make Diego less important.

Nothing new needed to replace what had been.

That wasn’t how love worked.

Perhaps Pip had once imagined that our hearts made room for someone new by rearranging everyone who had come before.

Now he understood it differently.

Some creatures simply had their own place.

Diego had his.

He always would.

⸻

Late in the afternoon, Liora eventually made her way home.

Pip stayed beneath Oak Hallow.

He had brought a book outside but hadn’t opened it.

Instead he sat in the place where a black cat had spent countless ordinary afternoons doing absolutely nothing remarkable.

And Pip thought about how remarkable that now seemed.

Diego had never needed Pip to be different.

He had never asked him to speak when he was quiet or be quiet when he needed to speak.

He had simply been there.

Again and again.

Until being there had become part of the shape of Pip’s life.

Pip rested his paw on the warm earth beside him.

“You were mine too, you know,” he said quietly.

The leaves above Oak Hallow moved softly in the afternoon breeze.

Pip stayed there for a while longer.

There was nowhere else he needed to be.