It’s been four months since Leonard died. I remem­ber going to bed that night, con­stant­ly turn­ing over my pil­low to find a dry spot, sob­bing so much I could­n’t fall asleep.

The necrop­sy showed that he had a mas­sive liv­er and kid­ney infec­tion. My vet excused his lan­guage and said, “Shit hap­pens” when I asked (per­haps with a quiver in my voice) what I could have done to pre­vent it.

Soon after, he sent me a card offer­ing his con­do­lences, and said it was a plea­sure deal­ing with some­one who cares so much. It was prob­a­bly the best thing any­one could have done to assuage any feel­ings of guilt. That fact that Leonard had a stub tail with no signs of scar­ring makes me sus­pect that he was the runt of the lit­ter, like­ly born with a weak con­sti­tu­tion, but that does­n’t stop me from always feel­ing like I could have done more.

He was always so affec­tion­ate, almost to the point of being over­ly so. Every morn­ing he’d rub his nose on my face until I stirred, which would be extreme­ly aggra­vat­ing if it weren’t one of the most seraph­ic ways to be wok­en up.

I remem­ber him sleep­ing with me one bright after­noon. Dolly decid­ed to nes­tle her­self in the crook of my arm under the blan­ket, and Leonard soon joined us, though he decid­ed to curl up on my neck instead. It was the per­fect nap con­fig­u­ra­tion.

I’m still glad I had him, as short as our time was. It sad­dens me most to think that I nev­er got to know what he’d be like as a mature cat, whether he’d keep his play­ful­ness and extro­ver­sion into adult­hood. At the very least, Heather G and Sergey, Aaron and Trolley, Darren and ____ all got to meet him before he died.

I took this pic­ture of his Humane Society pro­file before head­ing over to meet him. They named him, “Elvis”.

I’ve been check­ing the Humane Society web­site for male kit­tens avail­able for adop­tion ever since. I recent­ly found one with the right details and a goofy face too, but I don’t think I’m ready for anoth­er cat yet. I’m not sure I could han­dle it if the next one hap­pened to die so sud­den­ly as well. But I know that soon enough I’ll be itch­ing to adopt again, and that the idea of hav­ing anoth­er cat in my life will pre­vail over any wor­ries.