I did not post right away.
People were waiting for updates.
Messages had been coming for weeks.
“How is Amos?”
“Tell Amos I love him.”
“My mother asks about Amos every morning.”
“Did he eat today?”
I could not answer.
Not yet.
For two days, I moved through the house quietly.
I washed his bowls, then cried because I had washed his bowls.
I found one gray whisker on the couch and placed it in the envelope with his first person’s note.
I slept badly.
My ankle felt cold.
On the third morning, I sat at the kitchen table and wrote the hardest post of my life.
Amos went home yesterday.
Not to the shelter.
Not to a cage.
Not to waiting.
He went from my arms, wrapped in the blue blanket he chose on his first night here.
He was loved until his last morning.
I thought that would be the end of the story.
It was not.
The comments came like a wave.
Thousands of people I had never met were crying over a cat they had never touched.
Some posted pictures of their own old pets.
Gray muzzles.
Cloudy eyes.
Bent ears.
Missing teeth.
Old dogs in sweaters.
