If Cat wasn’t always falling asleep on the windowsill, I’d never have noticed you can see the horizon from this angle. A blurry line where the sky joins the city, shoved into all kinds of strange angles by buildings of different heights. When I squint, it looks close enough for me to pick it up between two fingers, a twisted rubber band that’s lost its elasticity and grown stiff.

Cat sprawls on the sill with his eyes almost shut, and I too gaze at him with my eyes narrowed to slits. When he happens to lounge against the horizon, he splays out his body and it looks as if the horizon is buckling beneath him, and the buildings with it. Perhaps it’s actually Cat who stretched out the horizon and made it grow slack. He has no idea and doesn’t care. At moments like this, Cat is like some strange monster descending from the sky in a Hollywood film, only we’ve happened to catch the beast at rest. When he awakens, every step he takes will cause massive destruction until the entire city has been flattened.

Cat’s chosen sleeping position often happens to be exactly where the sun rises or sets. When he oversleeps, he blocks the sun’s path. After a long day at work in the sky, the sun would love to get off the job promptly at six, but when it goes to leave, it finds a fat mound of flesh in its way. Only when Cat wakes up and walks away can the sun finally depart.

Cat isn’t always thoughtful enough to allow the sun safe passage. Sometimes he’s so lazy that he’s unwilling to shift an inch and keeps lying there. As a result, the sun is left waiting around, and daytime is extended a little.

The sun isn’t always well-tempered enough to wait patiently either. Finding it can’t go home after an exhausting day, its face grows bright red with anger, staining the clouds around it. Affected by the sun’s mood, the clouds go from scarlet to purple, and that’s why twilight is so colorful, a dazzling display between horizon and sky. As the sky grows incandescent with rage, the entire sky and all the clouds over the city look like they’ve been set on fire, a rare sight of flaming clouds overhead.

Everyone in the city looks up at this scene, snapping photos to post online. No one could guess that if they went searching, they’d find that Cat was the source of all this. Cat himself isn’t interested in the view though; he’d rather spend the evening snoring away.

But don’t think Cat is consistently lazy—there are many occasions when he wakes up even before the sun has begun its descent, once the temperature begins to fall. Cat understands that at this point, not only will he no longer be able to absorb any more sunlight but all the heat he’s carefully stored away during the day will dissipate if he stays put. Besides, he’ll be getting hungry, so he stands up and walks away, clearing the way for the sun’s exit.

This happens most often when winter arrives and it’s cold all day. Temperatures plummet even further come evening, and Cat wakes extra early from his nap, afraid of the chill. The sun takes the opportunity to slip away early too, disappearing below the horizon before its usual time. And so in the winter, night lasts much longer.