I was sitting here typing when a cat leaped onto my balcony from the balcony next door.

A magnificent cat. Either a huge female or a neutered male, tabby, sleek, fit, so glossy that its grey markings were almost silver.

You don’t see cats like that in Bangkok every day. It looked like it had walked out of a cat showroom. I couldn’t see a collar on it, but I’m sure it was someone’s pet.

It sat down and washed itself a bit. It was breathing a little heavily. It hung out on our balcony for a bit, then leaped over to next door’s balcony (it’s a row of townhnouses with adjoining large balconies). I went out and checked on it.

It was sitting by next door’s door, meowing at me, as if it expected me as the nearest member of the servant species to go over there and open the door. It had that whole “I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me” thing going on on its general deportment. And a truly piteable, kittenish meow.

I don’t think it’s next door’s cat. I’ve never seen it before. I wondered if it had got up onto the balconies and couldn’t get down.

It came back onto our balcony and meowed at me. Was it an “I’m hungry, feed me, thou wretch!” meow? A “Help, I’m stuck!” meow? I could have let it indoors, but then I’d have to had put it out in the street, and perhaps, I thought, this is an indoor cat that got out one of the balcony doors and shouldn’t just be dumped in the street.

I went downstairs to see if any humans were around. By then the cat had jumped onto the next balcony and was sitting on the balcony wall, meowing. The people in that house were in their downstairs area. They said it wasn’t their cat, and asked a guy across the road. Not his cat either.

The cat went over the next balcony, and was lost to view.

There are a couple of ways a cat could get down, if perhaps not very comfortably, so maybe it found its way to the ground — or back to its own house.

In any case, it reminded me that I rather miss having a cat around. We used to share a neighbour’s cat. He spent a lot of time in our house. I think he liked our squashy sofa.

If the cat is free to wander, I rather hope it decides it likes balcony excursions and comes back for another visit.