As a kid, I had a drawerful of marbles, which featured in games with my little playmates. We’d dig a small hole in the ground, place all our marbles into it, and lie prone in front of the hole. With utter focus, we’d hold our breaths and each shut one eye. The other eye would seek out the best angle, and with exactly the right amount of force, our thumbs would launch a single marble into the hole. Whoever knocked the most marbles out of the hole won the game.

A marble sent out in this way would knock against others with a clink, colorful orbs on the ground colliding, rolling, sparkling.

Mama didn’t like me playing marbles. “How could a girl lie on the ground like that?” she would complain. “It’s filthy. Do you know how hard it is to scrub the dirt out of your clothes?” I paid no more attention to her words than the wind. They went in one ear and out the other—she might as well not have bothered speaking. Having tossed Mama’s words to the back of my mind, I went out as usual to play, getting myself thoroughly grubby. By the time I was done, everything between my knees, chest, and elbows was blackened. When Mama saw me, she’d grind her teeth, biting back the urge to give me a good thrashing.

One evening, Mama told me a bedtime story in which the marbles that kids played with were actually kitty eyes. In the story, hunters would catch cats and gouge out their eyes, which were delivered to the owner of the local shop to be sold to us children.

This story terrified me, and I didn’t sleep a wink that night. Whenever I shut my eyes, I saw countless blinded kitties, some of whom had retained a single eye, which was even more distressing. I trembled to think I hoarded a drawerful of cat eyes in my room. What if the cats they belonged to found their way to our home and demanded their eyes back? For several nights after that, I was so consumed by worry that I couldn’t get to sleep.

From then on, I never dared play marbles again.

The way cat eyes roll around in their sockets does bring to mind the marbles I played with as a child, light shining through them, making them sparkle. Nowadays, when I think of Mama’s story, I’m no longer scared. Cats are so mischievous it makes more sense to me that they’d be the ones stealing children’s marbles to insert into their sockets.

Cat eyes swivel like marbles rolling across the ground. Having Cat in my life is like winning a couple of shiny new marbles.

These days, I often lie belly down on the floor, staring into Cat’s eyes, and he stares back at me. When he rolls his eyes, I roll mine back at him. He blinks at me, and I do the same back. I shoot him a look in return for each of his, matching him blow for blow, flicking the pair of glass orbs back at him. My gaze and Cat’s become a game of marbles. After several rounds, neither of us has lost, neither of us has won.