Missing

At the wet market in Shek Tong Shui (literal translation: rock pool beak), a district in Hong Kong with a colourful past, there is a fruit and flower stall on the street level. The boxes of seasonal produce spill out onto the pavement in cascades of colour: melon, pineapple and strawberries in the spring; lychee, dragonfruit and mangoes in the summer; pear, pomelo and persimmons in the fall; orange, grapefruit and mandarins in the winter; guava, apple and blueberries all year-round.

The market is next door to the public library, which I frequented when I lived in the neighbourhood, so I’d pass by the stall every few weeks. Over the years, I became acquainted with the owners. The elderly couple were reserved, yet kindly and attentive, even when it was clear that I wasn’t planning on buying any of their wares, but merely stopping by to say hello to their tabby cats.

The pair of felines were sisters. The more ginger and striped of the two was more shy and cautious, preferring to peer from a distance, usually from behind baskets and boxes, sometimes from as far as the interior of the market. She was untouchable. Her sister however, would unhesitatingly approach beckoning customers (or amateur street photographers like myself), purring with deep satisfaction as she sinuously wrapped her body and tail in figure eights around and about our shins. After just a few chin-and-ear scratches, the sand-coloured cat would flop onto the ground to expose her furry underside, tail swishing as if to demand further intimacies. Sandy’s uninhibited familiarity with strangers would prove to be her undoing.

The only picture I ever took of the two cats together was of them curled up and sleeping, nestled among twisted old tablecloths in a cardboard box that had once contained Sunkist oranges. It was nearing the end of the business day and the crowds were thinning. I remember standing and watching in quiet wonder as the sisters’ entwined bodies gently rose and fell, in time with their synchronous intakes and outtakes of breath. It was a moment of beautiful peace. I gazed for so long that I felt obliged to purchase a bag of seedless green grapes from the proprietor Uncle, who had been standing inconspicuously by the stall the entire time. It turned out that I’d captured one of the last moments the sisters would ever spend together.

Today, if you were to visit the market stall, you’ll find only a single cat. The orange and striped tabby grooms herself carefully as she stretches out next to the trays of fruit, or by the side of her owners’ feet. Ginger is still shy and cautious, perhaps more so after her sister vanished one night. The fruit stall Aunty assumes that the younger cat was whisked away by someone so taken by her affectionate demeanor that they felt the need to possess her. I nod as I listen to the Aunty’s rueful explanation of Sandy’s disappearance. It’s the most hopeful of all possible scenarios you can spin when you have no evidence, no eyewitnesses, no CCTV footage. Is Ginger sad? I ask. Of course! the Aunty answers, a hint of indignation in her voice. She is looking for her mui mui (younger sister) every day. Every day, she misses her.

The last time I visit Ginger is before I do my own disappearing act from Hong Kong. She is sitting, still as the Sphinx, on a table lined with packaging paper, and wearing her faded fleece coat, even though the biting cold of winter has long passed. I approach warily, readying myself for the moment when I’m too close for Ginger’s comfort, when I will trigger her to beat a hasty retreat into the shadows.

But surprisingly, she doesn’t flinch. Not a single muscle twitches.

Instead, the tabby cat looks right at me, her doleful eyes unblinking even as I slowly raise my smartphone to take her picture. As we gaze wordlessly at each other in another moment of beautiful peace, she tilts her head ever so slightly, as if to ask, Do you know where she is? Do you know where my sister has gone?