(i did write this while/after crying. it fluctuated during this story)

What I wouldn't give for one more night. One more night when you cuddled me to sleep. You gave the best damn cuddles.

You were fat, 13 pounds. You'd been in our house for six whole years. Ever since I can remember, you were there.

Hello Kitty, that was your name. And I loved you. I, naively, as a very young kid, put a pink hair tie around you because I was convinced you needed a collar, I pushed you around in that damn princess stroller all the time. I don't have that stroller anymore. I don't have you anymore, either.

I'm sorry that I didn't cuddle you every second of every day. I'm sorry that when you went out the back door and didn't come back, we didn't look hard enough. We searched for a week before giving up. It had happened to Margaret, too. We knew your fate. You'd died in the forest behind our house.

Sometimes, I wonder if you're still alive out there. I'm a kid, still, after all. Maybe you survived whatever things in the forest attacked you. Maybe you were still alive after three years of leaving.

But if you were, why did you never come home?

Three years have passed, Kitty. I'm in a lot better place now. Terrible things happened but I'm okay. As for the rest of them, they're okay too. I just wish you were there. Cats have an average lifespan of probably about fifteen to twenty years. You didn't even make it to ten.

The cat we got just before you left us, he's watching over me now. He cuddles me sometimes. He made sure I was okay. He reminds me a lot of you.

And the truth is, I still think about you a lot. Every late night when I get sad, I think of you. Every time I reminisce over childhood memories, I remember how shattered I was over the fact that you didn't come back.

The truth is, it's so sad. No single cat could cuddle as well as you knew how to. You were everything to me. I named you, for crying out loud.

It's been almost four years since you ran, HK. I don't know how long after that time you died, but I know that now I'm spending these hours thinking of how much I miss you.

I hate that I don't even remember what your meow sounds like. That's the worst pain of all.

I miss you. I love you. I hope when I die, if there's some place where all the dead people and animals go after they die, I hope you're there.

———————

Hello Kitty
2014-2020
larger than life.
rest in peace.🪦🕊️