“Yes.”
“We do that because grief doesn’t fit on the board.”
I didn’t say anything.
She kept going.
“We have kennels, meds, hours, volunteers, bite notes, intake counts, adoption appointments, and three people calling out sick. ‘This cat is in mourning’ sounds humane. It also doesn’t solve where I put the next six animals at eight o’clock.”
There it was.
Not cruelty.
Arithmetic.
That was what made it so much worse.
Cruelty would have been easier to hate.
Arithmetic sits there like a fact and dares you to argue with it.
I said, “That still doesn’t make the animal wrong.”
Dana rubbed her forehead.
“I didn’t say it did.”
“Then why do we act like it does?”
She looked straight at me.
“Because in a full shelter, being understandable and being savable are not always the same thing.”
That sentence stayed with me for weeks.
Because it was true.
And because I hated how true it was.
The picture on my desk kept staring back at me.
Cat asleep in sunlight.
Body loose.
Face soft.
One small life transformed not by magic, not by medicine, not by some perfect fairy-tale rescuer.
Just by time.
A chair near a window.
A woman who understood what silence sounds like after somebody is gone.
I started making little handwritten notes for the kennels.
Not official ones.
Nothing that messed with medical charts.
Just index cards clipped to the fronts in my own messy printing.
Go slow. Start with your voice.
Lost bonded companion. Not aggressive. Just scared.
Prefers company before touch.
Best with patient adopter.
Still learning the room is safe.
A few people rolled their eyes.
A few people ignored them.
But a funny thing happened.
