He came over one day from the neighbour’s place.  He just turned up.  Cats don’t tell you when they’re coming.  We didn’t know his name, but we knew it wasn’t Rafaello.  No one calls their cat Rafaello, not around here.  We called him that so, when he just turned up, he belonged to us. 
He danced on the back lawn, swiping flies and bumblebees, biting at the long grass, doing somersaults.  He jumped on our window, trying to get in.  His four paws stayed a moment on the glass.  Another moment.  It was the only time he didn’t move.  He did everything that was possible, and some things that weren’t.
He came every day, for weeks, until I took his photograph.  When you take a photograph, you don’t think much about it.  I must have wanted some memories.  I didn’t need them, though.  I had Rafaello. 
Posters sprang up in the street, with ‘lost’ in big letters, a telephone number and a picture of Rafaello.  They were fixed, ironically, to trees and lamp posts, things which couldn’t move.  But the image had his intensity.  He stared at something which had moved and caught his eye, but which was now no longer there. 
An old lady owned him.  Although she lived next door, we never saw her.  We heard her through the wall.  She died, and the house was taken over by a syndicate of Sikhs who drilled it to a powdery husk. 
She never got Rafaello back, or whatever name she used.  We never got him back either.  We have the photograph.
A pupil once told me about her guru.  A famous man.  His picture was on the wall.  She lowered her voice and sounded reverent.  She said that he could make objects disappear.  I looked impressed, but I had done it with a living mammal.