DISPLACED IN MULLINGAR:I SPENT Easter Sunday afternoon minding the cat in the front room, and watching EastEnders,as my mother dozed in an armchair by the fire. I was as full as a tick, and so was the cat, and both of us looked into each other's eyes for ages.

I got the cat last Thursday. I have lived long enough without one. And every time I go back to Co Leitrim to spend time with my beloved, it’s not the house or the trees or the wild views of Lough Allen that tear at my heart; it’s the sight of our long-haired cat, Roxy, stretched on the rug before a blazing fire of coal.

Roxy was born in a drawer in the bedroom of a house in Greystones and she has lived well off the fat of Leitrim mice ever since, and her posh little paws rarely touch the frosty earth outside the door on cold winter evenings. Sometimes when I come back from Mullingar and walk into the room she looks at me in smug wonderment, as if I was a fool to have given up a home of such comfort.

So despite the sophistication of Mullingar life, the stimulating dinner parties, the cosmopolitan bars, the coffee shops and supermarkets, and my house, which looks out on rolling hills and horses, the real truth is that I cannot live without a cat.

So I phoned the SPCA. I was asked what kind of cat I was looking for. I said it didn’t matter, “any cat will do”. This may have sounded a bit callous, as if perhaps I was looking for a cat to put in a pot and boil. As if I was looking for a cat from which to make a cover for my hot-water bottle.

So, to reassure the lady on the phone, I said I’d like to find a cat that had had a sad life, because one of the deepest instincts in me as a human being is to make any cat happy.

When I arrived at the centre, I found a tiger cat, with the usual stripes, crouched in a small cage, looking very forlorn. The SPCA lady quizzed me further regarding the kind of home I was offering, and when I passed the test she asked me to sign some document and then said I could take the cat away. Instantly, I decided to call my new friend Ronnie.

Apparently, Ronnie began life in happy enough circumstances; she lived in a house of little girls, all of whom cuddled her and loved her dearly. But she must have done something terribly bad, because after a while she was abruptly banished and found herself mysteriously interned in an SPCA cage, her little heart broken by loneliness.

When she got inside the door of my house on the outskirts of the town, she went from room to room, sniffing the air in stunned silence. Then she stretched before the open fire in the front room, closed her eyes and began to purr.

After a few days she developed routines: gazing at traffic from an upstairs window in the mornings, sleeping on a particular seat by the fire each afternoon, and crying every night when I closed her into the kitchen and she found herself once again alone.

So there we were, on Easter Sunday, me and the cat, gazing into each other’s eyes as my mother dozed.

It’s a great joy to be so still, and to feel that the afternoon has dislodged itself from time or anxiety, and has become a blanket of silence in which consciousness is enfolded.

And as coal burned in the hearth, and Phil Mitchell threatened to kill his father-in-law in EastEndersby pouring cement over him, I recalled other afternoons, long ago, when I used to watch Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Menwith my mother.

And then something happened, as it always used to happen. The cat slinked towards the sleeping woman, and leaped on to her lap. But the sudden movement frightened my mother out of her sleep, and having failed to gain a seat, the cat vanished under the sofa.

“In the name of God,” my mother cried, “what was that?”

“The cat,” I said.

“She gave me an awful fright,” my mother said.

“You must have been asleep,” I suggested.

“No, not at all,” she insisted, “I was only dozing.”

mharding@irishtimes.com