Big wet dog

On rainy days there was always a big wet dog in the café, so much damp fur spilling over its eyes and nose that infrequent customers generally mistook it for a coat. Nobody brought it: it whined at the door when the rain started, and walked in circles near it when the sun came out, and on dry days it was never seen. If the rain lasted past closing, it slept by the radiator. All the people of the café knew that one day it would rain and the dog would not come, and they would share an unspoken grief. But they were wrong. The big wet dog outlasted all of them.