My Little Storm,

I thought you were asleep when I found you. I called your name and touched your shoulder but you were already long gone. It wasn’t—and still isn’t—real to me. Your beautiful fur and yellow eyes; I thought you could have moved your head and called back to me. It hurts so much that you left me. I cried for hours. The entire night I felt you in the house and I still do now. I almost expect you to walk past me any second and ask for food with that cute little meow.

Remember two years ago when you were a kitten? I carried you home in the rain, zipped up in my sweatshirt pressed close to my chest because you were so small I was afraid I would drop you.

Remember how you stayed in my room for weeks until you were big enough to be around the dog? Any day you took him on, you left marks on him. You were my little fighter.

Remember how I would always sleep with you at night? I would put you on a pillow right next to my head so that I knew if you would move. I was afraid that you would fall off my bed and hurt yourself because you were so small.

Remember how I would take you downstairs to sleep with me whenever I would have a sleepover with friends because I didn’t want you to be lonely? And I would wrap you in a blanket because it wasn’t as warm as it was in my room.

Remember your first Christmas? All the toys you got that you always lost under my desk so I would have to run a ruler under it to get them out? But you would just lose them again anyway?

Remember the fleas you had? And how I stayed up until 1:00 AM to give you baths to wash them out and I was afraid that you would get sick because you were so cold? So I blow-dried your fur and you were too exhausted to be terrified?

Remember how scared you were when we took you to get your first set of shots? And you yowled and I held you because I loved you so dearly. And they told us they couldn’t spay you because you had a bad heart murmur and I was so scared that I cried on the way home while I held you in the car. Because you were so small.

Remember when you made my mom mad by marking your territory all over the hard woods? And I tried blaming it on the dog at first because I knew you couldn’t help it. Because I loved you and I didn’t want mom to take you to the pound. Because you were so small.

Remember when she stopped believing it was the dog? And I had to take you with me to dad’s because I didn’t want the pound to take you from me.

Remember meeting the other cats? How we showed you Dublin first because we thought that he would be the friendliest and that Rhianna would be the worst? But Dublin wasn’t and he scratched dad really bad.

Remember Rhianna? You were her best friend. Remember kitty Olympics in the morning? I think Rhi misses you. She was hiding when I found you. When you must have been waiting all day like that.

Remember how I would always call you Baby? How I used to joke that you didn’t know your own name because I always called you that?

Remember how I always vented to you about the routine of life like you could understand me? I knew you understood.

Remember all of my tears that used to get caught in your fur? How you always let me hold you and carry you around the house?

I’m sorry I wasn’t around that much because I was at school. I’m sorry that I shut you out of my room when you were older. When you weren’t so small. When you would always wake me up in the early morning. When I forgot you had a weak heart because you were so small.

I miss you, baby. I wish I could have made you understand that you were a big part of our family. I wish I was with you this morning. I wish I could have taken you with me to college. I wish I could explain to you why dad always got mad at you when you marked your territory in the doorway. I knew you didn’t know it was a bad thing to do and I’m sorry he scared you.

Thank you for being there, for being beautiful, for letting me hold you, for chasing shadows because you didn’t know they weren’t real things, for eating watermelon like a little vampire, for bothering me when I was on the computer.

I love you. I’ll never forget you.

Crystal, age 24