Can of beans

I must be a listener, for there are listeners and storytellers, and lately, strangers have confided in me tales that I cannot help but get caught up in.

"I am leaving tomorrow," someone said behind me today while I was walking to the library. "Did you hear me?"

I assumed that this someone was talking to someone else, perhaps walking beside this someone else. "Hey, you!" someone said, and when I looked behind me, there was a man with a long white beard, speaking to me. I was a bit tired, having delivered papers this morning.

"Excuse me?" I said.
"I had a cat," the man said, "22 years old."
"That's old," I said. I tried to walk faster. But the man with the long white beard was right behind me.
"Loved the cat."
"Uh-huh," I said.
"Can of beans killed the cat. Fell from the refrigerator right onto the cat."
"I'm sorry to hear that," I said. I started jogging. The man with the long white beard started jogging too.
"That's why I'm leaving," he said.
"Because your cat died?"
"Time for a change," he said. I stopped jogging and the man with the long white beard passed me and continued jogging down the sidewalk until I couldn't see him anymore.

Since Stella's died, not much has changed. How does one know when change is necessary? Seems like the answer would be easy, right? Is change ever necessary, or is it one of the last resorts one turns to before failure? I don't know.

I wonder where the man with the long white beard jogged to and where he will go next.

I wonder if the man with the long white beard opened the can of beans that killed his cat and devoured the beans straight from the can and felt full and slept well.