“In late afternoon, he sat at attention in the garden of his Yalta estate, coughing blood, a wool blanket draped around his shoulders. The pistol lay across his skinny knees. He waited for stray cats to appear. A dust of fine snow fell. At dusk, doomed, emaciated cats leapt onto the wooden fence around his property, their fur matted, their ears torn.  The starving cats did not fear Chekhov in his weak and dying state. They did not know that a gun silent in the first act must be fired in the next–no, they had their nine lives to live. He watched the cats run along his fence on their scrawny feet and sniff the air for the promise of scraps. Chekhov focused his vision. He was an audience rapt to their hunger, their resilience, and their pride. Why, then, did he grow bored of them?”

–c. from “Chekhov’s Cats”