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Tomorrow is Never a Promise

 Only a Fond Wish


I find myself digging yet another grave in the cemetery of my heart.  A small one.  A pretty one, somewhere aside from the world's worries.  Somewhere that I can hold him safe, forever.  

Endless kissu on the nose and head.  Never any bites or scratches.

I hold you close in my dreams, and when I wake up, I slowly let go, letting my dreams turn to memories.


It's been three days, and I still carry you in the pit of my stomach, wondering why our time was so brief, so dislocating and brutal, the full stop so abbreviated.  My eternal boy, ended.

Spike came to me on August 26, 2016, during a very tumultuous time in my life.  My drinking was spiraling out of control, I was sprinting towards my degree and licensure in my field of choice, I was in an extremely toxic relationship and starting to break free, and my mental health was crumbling.

The first night, I held him on my chest, this dehydrated, scrawny flea-ridden scrap of fur, and told him that if he lived, I would keep him forever.  For the next two nights, and many more over the coming months, I would hold him on my chest and sleep with his paws draped around my neck, and we would cuddle each other for the comfort we both had been lacking.  I would sing to him, Frank Sinatra's Blue Moon, and he would gaze at me and kiss his funny two-toned nose to my lips, and sigh, and we were content.

The toxic relationship left me with a heavy drinking problem, and Spike with a dragging limp from a rough push that pushed me past my breaking point with the horrible man.  Spike's body was so small, but he persevered on, partially paralyzed or not.  If his hind legs were stunted, he would work out his upper body to the point of overcompensation, and often slithered up the 7-foot cat castle like a leech, using the power of his arms to scramble the carpeted heights, wobbling precariously from the crow's nest to tear into me with his tiny but terrifying claws.  If he could soldier on, and heal, so could I.  We healed together.

The next relationship felt distant, both of us interning at very different funeral homes, and I sank into depression, drinking myself into a state of constant misery that felt so normal.  

A series of them, each as distant and emotionally bereft as the last.  JW, AS, back to MH, I picked up HSV from one of them in 2018, and felt very dire about my chances of ever maintaining a romantic relationship at that point.  I stubbornly tried anyway, but I was far too broken.  More argumentative, more combative, more drink.  More pressure to succeed as my career advanced.  JV, ND, MS, DK (RIP), BH, JI, JP... LF.

Always a Spike to come home to, to cuddle, to kiss, to sing to and cry my woes away.  So many over the years.  Four years.  We almost had five.

He was my reason to keep going, so many times.  I would look at his concerned little face and decide to keep keeping on, a little bit longer.  The Forever Kitten, Boi Prince, lover of catnip and king of Castle Asshole, always a wild card.  My green-eyed cat boifrandu.

Calamity steals the Calamitous.


Tomorrow is Never a Promise, only a Fond Wish.

At 11:11 on June 13, my wish is to enjoy a good long time with these Good Cats that remain, the ones that I can hold.  The Good Cats, and the Bad Cats too.  Please, let's spend a while, just loving and living.

And you too, my Best Cat, my Love.

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