Courtesy of freepix.com
by Cath Barton
I give out the papers, carefully cut into accurate squares, and when I clap my hands everyone sits up as if they’re back in school; even the cat puts out an experimental paw and someone says that when we’re more experienced we could make an origami cat and we all laugh and someone else says that would be pretty complicated and I don’t disagree.
Shape one is a simple box, I say, which is easy, I tell them (and it really is) and I demonstrate how the flat paper becomes three-dimensional, the magic involved in the process that you just have to trust and it will work, though the cat’s wandered off with a purr and a shake of his tail and is observing from the safety of his hammock by the radiator, in case anyone tries to fold him up, someone says, and we all laugh.
Outside the snow is falling; inside, five heads incline in a pool of light and fingers make mountain and valley folds and we line up our boxes before I say it’s time for tea and I’ll pop the kettle on; we all sit back and the room is full of smiles.
Everything is perfectly straightforward if you just follow the instructions carefully, I tell them, as we eat cake and congratulate ourselves on our efforts, wonky as some of the boxes are, and I’m just about to embark on instructions for our next shape when there’s a loud crack behind me and a row of startled faces in front of me; I whirl round just in time to see the conservatory fold in on itself, back, as it were, into its box, a perfect (de)construction, as neat as if I’d planned it as a demonstration, though a little too fast to follow, I would have said, but I can see from the horror on the others’ faces that a joke like this would not go down well.
Only when everyone has left, in rather more of a hurry than planned, with slightly-strained exclamations of thanks and hopes that we will be able to ‘get it sorted’, do I realise that the conservatory is back to normal and the cat is in there eating his supper.
When my husband comes in he congratulates me on the folded cat sitting on the table and I gulp and tell him that that’s the magic of origami.
Cath Barton lives in South Wales, UK. Her pamphlet of short stories Mr Bosch and His Owls was published in 2024 by Atomic Bohemian. Her prize-winning novella, The Plankton Collector, is republished by Parthian Books in March 2025.
