remote cards

There is a man feeding the cats as we come up. An older man in sturdy jeans and a t-shirt, surrounded by 16 milling cats.
"Hello", we tell him. "We just wanted to see them."
He nods. It is the obvious thing to do and he has no further questions. People who love cats know this. Cats must be watched. At all times.
He puts out one bowl after the other. The cats mill around, brushing him with upright tails, getting on their hind legs to paw at him. There is a constant purr swelling through the air. One tiger striped tom gallops past us on his way to the bowls, he got held up and is now terrified that there may not be anything left for him to eat, ever.
The man moves around his charges, petting every one of them, diligently, fairly. "Can't leave any out", he explains. "Would make them unhappy."
It is our turn to nod. Of course you can't. Of course it would.
One little tom, white with russet patches, leaves the crowd to come and say hello. He is old, his eyes are crusted. His ears are odd. Not only pink, as is usual with white cats, but ragged, as if chewed off. We comment on that.
"It's the sun, or something", says the man. "It just gets worse. The vet says there's nothing we can do."
We pet the little cat with the chewed off ears. It turned its back on the food bowl just for us. We pet it a little harder.