weathering the storm

cats

I don't think I've stopped crying since the day you passed. Before I even know of your death, I felt a heaviness in my chest and a guilt on my heart for not being there to stop you from leaving the house. I didn't know what I felt bad about in the moment but I know how why I felt so awful.

Having to come home and look for you, calling your name and checking your favorite napping spots only to find them worn out and empty. I didn't think anything of it and I went to go clean and do my chores. Your brother was hounding me, chirping and mewing and relentlessly begging for my attention.

I think he misses you, too.

I hate getting attached. It's my favorite part of existence and yet it burns me from the inside out Everytime the bridge of my heartstrings gets severed.

I can count on one hand the amount of cats I've ever been attached to. My mother ruined that ability for me. The amount of kitten carcasses I tried to salvage and bury, the attempts I took at my own life to make some kind of redemption for the lives that my mother was making just to watch them wither and decay as they bring more into the world. I'm not a cat person, as much as I love all animals.

Frosty was my childhood cat, I got him in preschool and he slept with me every night. He was healthy until that hellhole of a house. He got an infected hematoma in his ear and lost his nose entirely. My mother didn't do anything to help him. He passed shortly after. I won't forgive her for that. I watched every animal from my childhood become unrecognizable through her own incompetency while she preached like she was the victim.

Toothless came to me in that house. Emily brought him home from the vets office she worked at. He had an underbite and nobody wanted him. He was just a baby. I fell in love with him. He got me through that house. I kept him in my room, it was the only place I could keep clean enough to say I felt okay having animals in it. My mom let him outside a few times and he was terrified. I remember weeping as I tried to get him to come out from under the mobile home. He was all I had. He was the only reliable thing that wouldn't hurt me. When we moved into the house after that, I took care to keep him in my space again. I couldn't handle the thought of something happening to him. When we moved out of there, my parents left him behind. They wouldn't help me retrieve him, he wasn't an outdoor cat. I miss him. I won't forgive them for putting their own wants above my own. I loved that cat.

Rose was a grey tabby that was born in the hell house. She was my favorite. I had to help her mother give birth to her litter, and I was instantly smitten with rose. She came to find me even as a kitten and even though I raised them in my room given the rest of the house, the sentiment was there. She would meet me at the door and call for me when she couldn't find me. I had her for two houses and then Emily rehomed her. I hope she's okay. I think about her daily. She was my friend.

You know about Jerma and Winston. I can't bring myself to type it out right now without losing it.