Lonely cat walking in the rain

Описание: AI-generated meow music

The rain began without ceremony, as it always did in the city—thin at first, then insistent, turning sidewalks into mirrors and alleys into quiet rivers. The cat stepped into it anyway.
He was small, though not young, his fur a dark mosaic of browns and black, pressed flat against his body by the cold water. Each step sent ripples through shallow puddles, circles spreading outward and vanishing before they reached anything that mattered. The streetlights overhead flickered, casting broken halos that trembled on the ground. To the cat, the world smelled sharper in the rain—metal, damp stone, old food, distant humans. Familiar, and still lonely.

He walked down the same road he always did. Not because it led somewhere, but because it did not. The shop windows were dark now, their reflections warped by water. Once, long ago, he had slept under one of their awnings, curled against a warm pair of legs that smelled of soap and paper. That warmth had vanished one morning, leaving only the awning, and then not even that. Since then, he walked.

People passed him with umbrellas like mushrooms blooming and closing. None looked down. Shoes splashed close, sometimes too close, and he learned the rhythm of avoiding them without fear or resentment. Humans were large weather systems—brief, loud, and indifferent. He no longer expected anything from them.

The rain grew heavier. It traced lines along his whiskers, dripped from the tip of his tail. He paused beneath a flickering streetlamp, blinking water from his eyes. In the reflection below, he saw another cat walking toward him, thinner and duller, its eyes carrying the same tired shine. The reflection stopped when he stopped. It waited when he waited. He did not trust it.

A bus roared past, spraying water and sound, and for a moment the world became chaos. When it settled, the street was empty again. The cat resumed walking. Hunger tugged at him, not sharply, but constantly—like a memory that refused to fade. He knew which dumpsters might offer scraps, which doorways stayed dry longest. Survival had become a quiet skill, practiced without thought.

As he crossed an intersection, the rain softened. The city exhaled. Somewhere above, a window glowed warm yellow, and from it drifted a sound—music, low and unguarded. The cat stopped again. He did not understand music, but he understood its shape. It curved inward, like a place to rest.

He sat in the rain, just for a moment, letting it soak him through. He closed his eyes. The cold was still there. The hunger was still there. The loneliness too. But so was the music, and the steady rhythm of rain on pavement, and the simple fact that he was still walking, still choosing his path, one wet step at a time.

When the light changed and the music faded, the cat stood. He shook once, sending droplets into the air like brief stars, and continued down the street. The rain followed him, as it always did, but so did something else—small, stubborn, and alive.