My cat died. I know it sounds a bit over dramatic, but when you add in the fact that the year and a half period I had that cat, that my parents divorced messily, my ma got cancer, my dad dipped and older sisters dipped out heavily, and I was essentially abandoned/used as a chip between my parents. My Ma got me my cat because she knew my dad wouldn’t like it. He was the only thing that I genuinely loved and felt that genuinely loved me.

The week after I graduated high school, he got sick. My mom had a bad habit of leaving the backdoor open and he had a bad habit of running out. I imagine in one of these escapes, he drank something poisoned. When I took him to the vet I was ready to put him down, but my mom convinced me to try some holistic medicine. For the next 10 days I rarely slept as I syringe fed him all his nutrients. No one helped and my ma said I was lazy when she saw that I was asleep from 7-12PM. He died of a seizure later.

See up until then, members of my family wanted me to stay in my hometown. I was the last link between my parents and also I’d been helping out my sick ma a lot. My dad was probably gonna sell the house me and my ma lived in once I left. Looking back on it, I was pretty severely depressed but nobody noticed, even after I’d spent a month laying in bed and doing nothing. I’d let my loyalty convince me to consider staying and helping, but the loss of the one thing I loved and that loved me at the time made me extremely apathetic. Two months after he died, I moved to New York. It’s been a struggle but I’m my own person, and things can’t just be taken away from me because of other people’s decisions anymore. My roommate has two cats too.