Territory
July 5, 2026
Among the many cats fate has sent my way, there’s one named Tiger.
Every few days, Tiger comes home looking as though he has survived a war. Shredded ears. Fresh scars. Raw flesh. Blood. You’d think he was fighting for his life…
He isn’t!
The thing about Tiger is… he’s for the streets!
Literally.
He’s a tiny, furry Napoleon with Casanova’s appetite, convinced the entire neighborhood belongs to him. Including the girls. His kingdom is never big enough.
…Territory is a peculiar instinct.
It isn’t even necessarily the place we love. It’s simply the place we don’t want anyone else to claim.
Apparently, hearts come with property lines too.
I just didn’t know it yet.
Well, it would take one phone call, one broken heart, and one man with the emotional maturity of a territorial cat for the pieces to fall perfectly into place.
It was Friday night, and I wanted absolutely nothing from the world. I was exhausted. I had a few hours just for me, and an upcoming weekend. I couldn’t wait to just walk around, go shopping, do skincare, haircare, and whatever else we girls call doing nothing.
Well, the plan quickly changed – actually, it shattered. At 6 a.m. my phone was already on fire. It was my friend Lucia.
“Last night I caught my boyfriend cheating. I haven’t slept. I don’t know what to do…”
And you can guess how that went.
The two of us spent the next two days hauling Lucia’s life out of that apartment. Naturally, Mr. Casanova vanished the moment it was time to carry the weight.
Funny how quickly someone can become a stranger. Twelve hours earlier, they’d shared a bed. A home. A life. Apparently, lifting a single box was where he finally drew the line.
This Casanova – and let’s clear this up right away, we’re not talking Heath Ledger material here – had been acting strangely for the last few months. I’d already told Lucia it was worth digging a little deeper.
Oh no! She swore by the man. Praised him like a saint.
“He just isn’t like that. So mature for his age, and such a good person.”
Well, a month later… He came home late again.. with glitter on his face!
Lucia said, “I thought I was going crazy – blamed and gaslit myself for even letting it into my thoughts.”
But fate wasn’t quite finished… About thirty minutes later, he rushed out after a mysterious call from “some friend”.
That night, he fell asleep with his phone unlocked. By then, the questions had become too loud to ignore. Lucia reached for it.
A few minutes later – the chair vanished from under her, and she found herself on the floor, literally.
He had been cheating not with one – not with two – he had a trinity of girlfriends. None of them realized they had each been handed the same script.
The screenshots, the intimate conversations, the promises she read to me were beyond anything I could invent, and I refuse to write a story THAT ugly.
Reality does have a way of outdoing poetry – life can be crueler, and more startling, than the most twisted verse.
She was heartbroken. She saw photos, promises, plans – intimate conversations that stunk worse than any truth he could have admitted. A Shakespearean drama, minus the art.
8th of March – Women’s Day – he spent the morning with Lucia and her family, deceiving her with gifts, then slipped away “to the gym”… for Act II – celebrating with Girlfriend Number 2.
Meanwhile, Girlfriend Number Three – current queen of the harem but also an ex – had just left France, where she lived, spent all her savings, and moved back to Sofia to be with Casanova. Turns out, she was a neighbor, living just minutes away from them, because she wanted to be close to him. How cute.
He was promising each of them the very same future. Letting his mind wander off to horizons he’d never reach… Just like a little boy bragging about what he’d be when he grew up.
Oh, and the pièce de résistance? When Lucia demanded he tell the other women the truth, he didn’t confess to betraying the partner he’d lived with for three years.
His confession? “I’m seeing other girls.”
Apparently, everyone occupied exactly the same plot of land in his kingdom. Lucia simply had the added privilege of managing the estate.
For five months, this little soap opera had been running uninterrupted. And who knows how many more women were in the cast.
What struck me most? Lucia never doubted him. In fact, she admired him. She believed she had found one of the good ones.
He hadn’t built her trust.
He’d manufactured it.
The tragedy of manipulators isn’t that they’re evil. It’s that they’re astonishingly small. Their world rarely extends beyond the immediate reward. The future can never belong to them… because tomorrow is a debt they’ll leave someone else to pay.
Later, I kept returning to the same question: why don’t men like that ever leave?
Even when they’re miserable, even when they’re cheating with a whole yoga class?
It took another man to answer the question.
“Territory” he said.
That’s all.
They won’t give up what’s “theirs”, even if they stopped wanting it long ago.
Rather like the forgotten pieces in our wardrobes. We don’t wear them anymore. We’ve drifted away from them. Yet we still can’t bear to let them go.
…But when the property in question is someone’s heart, isn’t that cruel?
Love, apparently, isn’t always romance.
Sometimes, it’s just real estate.
Thank you for reliving this moment with me!
See you next Sunday at 4.
Love, Kiki