At the risk of protracting the misery, I wanted to jot down some thoughts on grief. Matt’s, mine, and Simon’s. I keep thinking of the saying about the river–how you never step into the same river twice. Grief seems to be something like that, too. All of us are going through it, but we all seem to be stepping into different parts at different times.

Matt’s path seems to be shock, followed by existential angst and sadness. He was too ambushed to register much pain with Tristan, but the flood gates really opened when Percy declined. It was as though both of their deaths registered at the same exact moment.

I am the reverse. As much as Percy was bonded to me and very much my feline counterpart, I feel manageable sadness where he is concerned. I knew he was ill, I had time to come to grips with that, and I nursed him as best I could. When he first quit eating, I spent a large part of my day finding ways to coax him on until the fluid therapy could restore his appetite. When you have spent hours searching out different formulations of wet food, adding tuna water to it, heating it up, putting it through a food mill to make it easier to eat, and then serving it elevated to alleviate nausea—and doing that four times a day—you know you took care of your pet.

But Tristan? He lost a pound in one month, and I didn’t even notice until he quit eating altogether and staggered from weakness. I feel tremendous guilt that I let him down when he really needed me. People keep telling me not to, that it’s hard to tell who’s eating what with two cats, that cats hide their illnesses well, and all that. And I know it’s true. But I also fear I neglected him while tending to his brother, never imagining they could both be sick at the same time. I hope my friends and family are right and that this guilt is a manifestation of the grieving process that will fade over time.

Simon, bless him, is sticking to denial and bargaining. At first he didn’t seem upset at all. He’s not yet four, so we understand that he couldn’t fully understand what was happening. Still, it (irrationally) hurt us to see that he didn’t seem that upset. Then we felt bad for wanting him to feel bad. True to type, Matt rationally analyzed his feelings in this regard and moved on, while I felt guilty for mine and then also moved on.

We both looked for gentle ways to broach the subject with Simon, as it seemed fundamentally unhealthy to just pretend that nothing had happened at all. The first day or so, we’d mention Tristan or Percival, and Simon would immediately and inartfully change the subject. A typical exchange:

“Do you miss Percival, Simon?”

“When I grow up, I’m going to be a bulldozer.”

Right then! He absolutely, steadfastly refused to discuss what was going on. So we backed off a bit. I did get out some old pictures to show Simon, figuring we could both get a laugh out of seeing Daddy with long hair, me with super-short hair, and Tristan as a tiny, fluffy kitten.

A day or so later, the questions came. Questions like “When will Percy jump up on my bed?” and “Couldn’t the doctor make him new and better again?” and the truly terrifying, “When I’m an old cat, will my kidneys quit working and my body break, too?” He also noted that when Caillou was sick, he didn’t go to the doctor; his mommy took care of him. He was clearly looking for a familiar context for illness and death.

Now, we’ve all arrived at bargaining. All of us are wanting to drown our sorrows in new feline companionship, and we are bargaining with ourselves and each other about the timing.

Matt wants to wait until we take a family holiday in October. He wants time to grieve Percival and Tristan properly before we adopt again. (Or to quote him, “Listen, if a widower remarries in a year or so, some people think it’s too soon, but others understand he just liked being married and it’s no disrespect to his wife. But if he marries in a month, that’s just messed up. No one thinks that’s a compliment to the wife.”) When the process is over, however, he wants kittens. Adorable, exuberant kittens with their whole lives ahead of them.

Simon wants cats now. Literally now. “Mommy,” he asked me Saturday night, “Can we go to the animal shelter and find new cats that need a home? … What will our new cats names be? I know, Brownie, and Uncle Steve, and Aunt Tia, and Nathan, and Liv, and Maddie, and Ben!” He helpfully explained using his hands that he’d like to have 2, no 3, no 4, no 5, no 10, no 20 cats.

As for me, I’m torn. I feel a need to wait. But I hate my house right now: I hate lying in bed and hearing nothing; I hate sitting at the kitchen island and staring at the place where the food bowls used to be; I hate having unfettered use of my mouse; I hate that no one is in the kittie sauna, AKA the attic. I also hate that my mind has played tricks on me and made me think I was hearing or seeing the cats more than once.

So while Matt watches the calendar, I’m going to watch my knitting needles. I just bought yarn for a project for Simon. It’s a multi-color affair, requiring me to hold more than one strand at a single time. It’s the exact kind of project that Percy and Tristan would wreak havoc with and that I never attempted after they arrived on the scene in ’95 and ‘96. I will enjoy getting to work on my stranded knitting without interference, I am going to add to my skill set, and when I am finished, by George, I’m going to start looking for new feline companionship to ensure a 10-15 year gap between such projects.

For the sake of marital harmony, I hope it takes six to eight weeks. I really don’t think I can spring another box with another unvetted kitten on my husband.

Bedtime stories in the final weeks

I’ll keep this brief, as I wrote quite a bit about a Percy when he turned 15 a year and a half ago.

After four weeks of an iron supplement and two weeks of thrice-weekly subcutaneous fluid therapy, Percy appeared to have turned a corner yesterday. He had been more active and social for over a week, was moving around well, and was his usual extroverted self. Yesterday he even ate his full amount of food, a first in four weeks. He appeared to feel a lot like his old self, and I thought we just might be able to manage his condition for  a few weeks or months.

Then today, it all fell apart. He whined. He followed me around, but in a pathetic and not demanding way. His eyes looked off. His posture looked off.  He didn’t eat a bite. And then, just after we tucked Simon into bed, he meowed plaintively, hid in a closet, and threw up blood.

We acted immediately. My brother Steve came over on zero notice at 10:30 Friday night so Matt and I could usher Percival on his long journey home. We selfishly wanted one more night with him curled up on the bed with us (this is a cat that would lie next to me under the covers and share my pillow), but our gut told us he wasn’t going to have a peaceful night and that we owed him better than that after fifteen years of unwavering loyalty and love.

Percy died just before midnight at the emergency animal hospital, two short days after we bid farewell to his kid brother.

In human years, he was around 85. And for all but these few weeks, he has been the picture of health. The only time he ever went to the vet before this July was for an annual exam and vaccinations. So he had a good run, I know. And we gave him a good home for what would have been fifteen years next week. I know that too.

But my goodness my heart is breaking right now. For the third straight day, I’m going to bed with a headache from stress and crying. And tomorrow I face the sad task of cleaning up all the cat stuff in my house and telling my little boy that yes, “Percy has gone to be with Tristan” (his words).

We’ll all move on. We’ll grieve and bring a new cat or cats into our home to love. But right now my house feels desolate and I feel we’ll never, ever be privileged with the company of two such singular, beautiful animals.

Cheers Percy and Tristan. You were two in a million.

I  had planned to write a tribute for Tristan when he turned 15, but he had other plans, took a sudden dip in health this week that we hardly noticed with all the Percival drama, went into total renal failure today, and had to be put down at age 14 years, 3 months. I wrote this today while awaiting lab results and very much fearing the worst:

Tristan is the baby in the house, an orange bundle of joy and trouble we brought home to our Ann Arbor apartment when he was three months old in August of 1996. Whereas Percy’s angst and constant vocalizations made me worry that my own anxiety was contagious across species lines, Tristan, like many second children, has been much more laid back.

When I first got Tristan, it caused some strife in our household. Matt was justifiably furious with me for going out and getting him—not because he didn’t agree to getting a kitten to keep Percy company (he did), but because we were supposed to go and pick out a kitten together. Instead, shortly before my dear friend Cindy was due to move away from Ann Arbor, I convinced her to take me to the Humane Society to drown my impending sorrows in a kitten.

The first little guy who caught my eye was a mouthy little brown tabby.

“Are you kidding me?” Cindy all but yelled. “He’s just like Percy! You can’t have TWO like that; Matt will kill you. Look at this happy little red-headed guy just sitting in his cage purring. Take him home.”

[Reader: I adopted him.]

Cindy, being a red-head, is understandably partial to orange fur. And I, missing Cindy before she actually moved away, saw the advantage of bringing a red-head into my house. The first several hours, we had to wander about with my new baby, as he had fleas and couldn’t go inside anyone’s home before getting to the vet. So he ran around the UM law quad, affording me many visits with student admirers, and then I took him to my friend (and Cindy’s brand new husband) Tim’s place for a bit.

When I arrived, Matt was already there. He clomped over to where I stood with my box, glowering at me. He continued to glower as he approached the box and had no patience for my “but I was sad!” excuses. Then he looked down and took in Tristan, with his half Himalayan/half tabby moon face, his petite pink nose, his huge golden eyes, his exuberant coat, and his broken engine of a purr, and his face immediately softened and transformed.

He was in love. And how could he not be? After much deliberation, we settled on the name Tristan. We thought the name went with Percival, as both appear in the Ring cycle and in Arthurian legend. But in truth, he’s named after the character Tristan in All Creatures Great and Small. That Tristan, the brother of James Herriot’s senior partner Siegfried, was a young red-headed lad who was constantly getting into mischief but whose sweet heart and good nature prevented anyone from staying mad at him for long.

The name suits him. He is the cat in the house most likely to get his head stuck in a Kleenex box, to get entangled in my knitting, and to eat fake plants. You cannot wrap a present anywhere near him. Nor can you cook Indian food, as the little guy is mad for garbanzo beans. I kid you not.

He is also a one-cat argument for declawing. We didn’t do it, and we won’t with our next cats either, but Tristan might just be one of the great scratchers of his time. None of the positive or negative reinforcement in the world can dissuade him from scratching, and I have the shredded chair and suspiciously covered couch to prove it. He will stoically take his punishment and resume scratching immediately. For him, a squirt or clap is a small price to pay for such joyous abandon.

In his own little way, he can be as demanding as Percival. It’s just that whereas Percy would meow, pace, and stomp on my head for food, Tristan’s preferred modus operandi is to shove his face into my hand while I try to use the mouse. We call it “demanding affection,” and while it’s cute, “demanding” is the operative word. He would, if he could, have his cheek rubbed for 10 hours a day. And while he’s pretty hard to resist, no one has that kind of time.

His sweet nature and happy face has led to a lot of silly nicknames over the years. I’m (almost) embarrassed to type these all out, but he’s been “kitten”, “kitten caboodle”, “kitten dreamsicle (for his coat color) caboodle” and even “boodaru” over the years. In fact, we use his nicknames so much that I’m not sure if he ever properly learned his real name. Which is somewhat ironic, as his paperwork from the Humane Society led us to joke that we had rescued him from a life of illiteracy. (The person who surrendered him misspelled Himalayan, had actually named him “Zachery [sic] Todd”, and listed as the reason for surrender that “my three year old is two [sic] rough.” Yes, we are mean.)

Tristan is something of our secret joy. He’s shyer than Percival, more likely to stay upstairs when company comes over, and the one to generally hide his light under a bushel. He is choosy about who gets to see his uninhibited self, but if he likes you, he really, really likes you. And for the record, he has consistently shown immediate affection for those who end up being the best people I have known: This cat is a great judge of character. If Percival’s mouthy, needy extroversion is all me, then Tristan’s mellower, choosier brand of affection is a lot like Matt.

He has been, for fourteen years this week, a source of constant joy and balance in our home. He is the feline embodiment of mirth and whimsy, a living breathing smile, and—like stars in the sky—has brought more grins and laughs to my life than anyone could ever count.

I can’t even begin to imagine my house without him. I missed him all day today before he was even really gone.

Getting ready for this made getting ready for Passover look like a picnic, mainly because my yard had suffered from 3 years of neglect. I had two planting beds to weed and mulch, a stone border to dismantle, a stone wall to hew down, a pile of mulch to relocate, a pile of dirt (deck construction debris) to get rid of, a leaf/compost pile in the back of the yard to tidy up, and an old concrete platform to bust up. Matt had to help with the last of the wall and Matt and his brother moved about half of the stones, but I did all the rest except for the platform. And I have isolated spots of poison ivy, a thumb that went into spasm for two days, and a spade injury on my left leg to prove it. I’ve also got a respectable yard and a pound of new muscle mass, so I’m feeling triumphant! And the party was grand.

Here’s Simon, the day before, “helping” Matt move stones to the back of the yard.

Simon is a big help.

The next day, the party got started with badminton and corn toss. To my delight, everyone headed straight to the back yard and started playing.

Getting the Party Started

Two platters of chilaquiles, heaping amounts of side dishes, a pitcher of sangria, and four pitchers of lemonade later, the party looked like this:

That’s Simon getting soaked with cousins Liv and Maddie. The next day, I would do three loads of wet clothes and towels, and then invite friends over to play more corn toss, throw back a second pitcher of sangria, and kill all the leftovers.

Isn’t summer the best?

Around Chanukah last year, we noticed a shift. The gender identification switch was flipped, and suddenly Ben, the youngest of the crew, came to the fore. At 7 ½, Ben  is 4 years Simon’s senior and is perfectly poised to be the object of adoration: He’s just enough older to be able to show Simon all sorts of things Simon can’t do or isn’t familiar with, but he’s still young enough to be approachable and identifiable.

This weekend, Simon and Ben got together twice and were able to share their adoration for all things Rondo. Simon referred to the NBA championships (of which I will say little, as my most hated team in the league beat one of my favorites) as “Rondo”, knows his jersey number, and asks to see Rondo’s house (hometown Louisville house, not current Boston and/or Orlando mansions) on Google maps. Ben, meanwhile, is going to camp Rondo this week and next and loves to play basketball on his back-yard court and on the Wii.

I wasn’t thrilled with this last bit, as we fight the screen time fight frequently, and I have no intention of spending money in my unemployed state on an expensive video game. I had been planning to delay Simon’s discovery of the existence of video games for as long as possible. But Ben and Steve prevailed, so Simon was in the thrall of the older cousin and the video games, explaining to me when I told him we had to leave that “playing Speed Racer was his job” and that “it would be too dangerous for me.” I love preschool logic.

By days’ end, Simon wanted to know when he could go back and was in tears at the thought of leaving. Cousin Maddie, who at 9 is currently a junior camp counselor for three-year-olds, took one look at Simon and helpfully told me that he looked like he was about a minute from a melt-down. Au contraire, young Maddie, he was a minute into his collapse!

Luckily, Ben left a very cute message on our answering machine last night asking when Simon could come back. I was a bit surprised by this, as I figured spending time with the little boy who can’t keep up might start to feel like unpaid babysitting. Then Steve explained to me that this is the first time Ben has ever gotten to be the big cousin, that Simon is easy, and that he’s relishing his new role.

I am, needless to say, delighted that what is a treat for one is an equal treat for the other. I am also interested to see how Ben’s bull-in-china-shop mien will mesh with Simon’s more hesitant and sensitive nature. Having said that, I have put my brother on warning that first time Simon nags me about the NBA or Speed Racer Wii game, he’s on the hook for buying us one for Chanukah or Simon’s birthday!

Today is the official beginning of summer, as the 97-degree temperature is making all too clear. Tomorrow it will be 99, which means I had better drag the pool out of the shed.

We spent Father’s Day visiting. First, a trip to Zadie and Nana’s house for cars, fish feeding, and Finding Nemo watching. After his nap, we zipped over to Grandma and Papaw’s house for dinner and outdoor fun.

And cat admiring:

Friends

Simon and TJ remain fast friends. During a typical day at Grandma and Papaw’s house, Simon will have at least two 45-minute play/chase/pet sessions with him.

We also hauled out Grandma’s newest yard-sale finds. The clear favorite:

"I'm good at this!"

Once we got him batting left-handed (I think they had him going right at school last week), he had a blast whacking the ball across the lawn. The quote in the caption above is a real one, and was followed by “Mama, go get Daddy and Uncle Dan so they can watch me!” He was so very proud of himself.

The night ended with a trip around the block in the Little Tikes toy car. I think that trip gets filed away under “Last Things”, though. His legs have gotten so much longer that his knees were too high up and he had a hard time getting the car to move! Out goes one era: in ushers another.

My mom would have just turned 42 when this happened, making it 30 years since she had been “Hanna” and 22 years since she had been a Wolfson. I was stunned.  “How in the world,” I asked myself, “could anyone be recognized after so many years? That’s crazy!”

I’m smiling as I remember this conversation from 29 years ago because today, entering KIP to pick up Simon after school, a man making a delivery took a good long look at me and asked,

“Excuse me, are you Jessica? And did you go to Johnson Middle School?”

I was nearly speechless. Because, in fact, I attended Johnson beginning in August of 1982… nearly 28 years ago. How could anyone be recognized after so many years? That’s crazy!

So you can perhaps imagine the degree of comeuppance delivered to me in the last several days when I slew some familial sacred cows by going directly to the most obvious primary source material available: the cemetery.

It all began with a phone call from a cousin of mine in California. His father (my Bubbie’s brother) died in Michigan last spring. He and his mother are ordering the headstone, and he wondered if I could I please go to the cemetery, take pictures of family stones, and email them to him. He and my great-aunt want to make sure they get the text right and follow family custom as much as local rules and personal preferences allow.

So now let me begin by listing some salient information about my family’s names handed down to me as Truth via oral history.

• My maternal grandfather, Lester M. Wolfson, had no Hebrew name. Following the custom of the time, he had only a Yiddish name, Laser.
• Further, the “M” in Lester M. Wolfson stood for nothing. The family saw other Americans have middle initials, and so they gave him one without ever assigning a proper middle name to it.
• Lester M. Wolfson’s father was Simon Wolfson. His headstone reads “Simon W. Wolfson”, but no one knows what the “W” is for.
• Lester’s mother was “Bessie” a popular name of the time randomly assigned to her and having nothing to do with her Yiddish name, Peshe. She also had no Hebrew name.
• My paternal grandfather, Aaron Goldstein, had his name changed to “Harry” when he arrived at Ellis Island by a clerk who could not make out his thick accent.
• My paternal grandmother’s people, the Cerfs, had a very common French name that is not particularly associated with Jews.

How many of these truths do you think held up to a careful examination of headstones and subsequent hour or two of basic research? If you answered 0 (zero!), you are correct. Let’s start the show after the page break, as this may rightly be considered a tangent.

• Lester M. Wolfson’s headstone reads, clear as day (in Hebrew), “Eliezer”. Following the custom of his era of having a couplet name, that is a Hebrew sacred name followed by (a) a related Hebrew secular name or (b) a related or euphonious vernacular Yiddish name, his religious name was “Eliezer” and he was more casually called “Laser.” The English “Lester” was reserved for his generation and following. Let me now say that the “Wolfson” in Simon’s name is for my Zadie, as I believed that both “Lester” and “Laser” were unworkable. Had I done my research, he’d probably be “Simon Eliezer/Eli Whitworth.”
• About the empty signifier “M.” Sigh. Lester’s name, spelled out clear as day for anyone with even remedial Hebrew reading skills, is “Eliezer Moshe ben Shimon”. He might not have gone by “Lester Moses” but clearly that’s what the M was for.
• On to the mysterious “Simon W. Wolfson” Well, his Hebrew name posed more of a challenge. The “Shimon” was clear enough, but after that came some Yiddish that was distinct enough from Hebrew that I could not figure out what the letters signified. Thanks to the Yiddish alphabet charts I found online, I discerned that the mystery middle name was “Velvl”, a common Yiddish name meaning “Little Wolf”. In other words, (a) the middle name was a play on the last name; and (b) the initial in English should be “V” not “W”. Does no one look this stuff up?
• Moving on to Bessie. Her parents knew much more than me or my parents. “Peshe” is the Yiddish for “Batya”, a Hebrew standalone name and a nickname for “Batsheva”. It means “daughter of God” or “daughter of the oath” respectively. This is the same name as “Elizabeth”, with the components reversed. And what was a popular nick-name for Elizabeth during my great-grandmother’s era? Bessie. Her parents got it exactly right.
• Next up, Aaron “Harry” Goldstein. Well, it would seem that a common Yiddish nickname for “Aaron” is “Haare” or “Hurre”. Given all that I learned about names in about two hours, it seems likely to me that when asked his name, my grandfather gave the Yiddish one, which does indeed sound a lot like Harry and would go far towards explaining why I found dozens of “Harry Goldsteins” in the Ellis Island ship manifests.
• And finally, “Cerf”. Until the Napoleonic era, Jews did not have surnames; we used a patronymic system that is still used for our religious names. Once family names became required, they were sourced by varying means: physical characteristic, location, profession, randomly assigned, adapted from a first name, etc. One of the more peculiar ways of choosing a last name was to start with a tribe of Israel, look for Biblical citations that associate that tribe with a particular animal, and then use the vernacular for that animal as a last name. Thus, the tribe of Naphtali, associated with the doe, becomes Hirsh or Cerf, depending on whether you speak German or French.

From this little exercise, I have learned the following:

• I could have been more direct in naming after my grandfather.
• Some relatives with unappealing Yiddish names could have easily been named for had anyone looked up the Hebrew or English equivalents (“Elizabeth” for “Bessie”, “Joy” or “Rena” for “Freida”).
• Don’t just listen to the rabbi! My poor great-grandfather has the wrong initial on his stone, and I have a Hebrew name that is not only ugly, but also totally unrelated to both my English name and the name of the person for whom I was ostensibly named.
• My nephew Benjamin, by pure accident, has a name of classical Eastern European form. His middle name is Wolfson, and the “wolf” is associated with the tribe of….  Benjamin.
• Never trust what anyone says. Always go to the source. Always check.

So if there are any Goldsteins, Kahns, Soirefmans, Wolfsons, Sotsky’s, Schlossers, Loesers, or Cerfs out there trying to pick a name for the next generation, please come talk to me first. If I can keep just ONE little girl from being named “Yocheved”, it will make all this research worthwhile.

He has now been with Jim and Evie for two weeks. They both think he’s just as sweet and wonderful as I did, and the new family seems to be bonding together well. Simon gets to see him on Thursdays, and from what I hear he and the cat both enjoy these reunions immensely.

Last week, Kitty Friend was neutered, and he’s gotten the first round of all his shots. His coat is now clean and glossy,  hair is growing back on the bald patches of his ears, the puncture wounds on his head have all healed, and he’s sporting a hot pink color that looks glorious against his sable coat. Being inside and loved for two weeks has done him a world of good.

And while he’ll always be “Kitty Friend” to me, his new name is Theo Jr., ” TJ” for short. All’s well that ends well.

It seemed that Kitty Friend had adopted us. I was in agony, as I cannot in good conscience bring a young indoor/outdoor (at best) cat into my home while I have two senior indoor-only cats. So I did what anyone in my shoes would do: I put up signs all over the neighborhood imploring Kitty Friend’s owner to call me, and then I called the biggest animal lovers I know and plead my case. Those would be Jim and Evie, my in-laws.

At first, there was some resistance. Well, they’d thought about having cats and missed having cats, but there were some logistical issues to work out. I understood—and said as much—but kept talking. “He’s so pretty. He’s so sweet. Simon loves him so much. You should have seen him on my mom’s lap! And I just don’t know what to do. Was there any way to make it work with three in my house? Because just look at him, he’s precious.”

Kitty Friend on the Porch

An hour later, my father-in-law announced I should bring Kitty Friend to their house on Friday. Then he laughed that we were BOTH going to go broke bringing in homeless cats. I cried a little. Thank goodness. No, scratch that. Thank Jim and Evie!

So what happens next? Thursday I call the vet and arrange a drop-in check-up. I go buy food. I have my plan set up. And Kitty Friend doesn’t show up. Not in the morning to greet Simon on his way to school. Not in the afternoon for a snooze. And not in the evening for a pre-bedtime visit. The cat that had practically moved in—the cat who had just the day before sat in front of my door and fixed me long, meaningful stares—had gone AWOL. When I went to bed Thursday night, it was the longest Kitty Friend-less stretch I had had in five days.

“He’s lost,” I speculated to Matt. “Or trapped. Or out hunting for food and has had to increase his territory to find something. Or he’s been hit by a car or wounded in a terrible fight.”

“That could be it,” Matt replied. “But I think we just shamed Kitty Friend’s owners into taking care of him. They saw the signs and were embarrassed.”

Maybe. But I wasn’t convinced. Simon asked about Kitty Friend, too. “Where was he? Was he home? Could he come to our house.”

I told a nice story, hoped it was true, and went to bed feeling uncertain.

This uncertainly came to a close when my neighbor Greg knocked on our door at around 10:30 this morning. Kitty Friend was in his yard. Soon, he was back on my porch, drinking water and munching away on his lunch. Then, he got stuffed into a cat carrier and brought to the vet. Kitty Friend is:

• about a year old, maybe a bit older;
• in general good health;
• free of Feline HIV or leukemia;
• recovering from some battle wounds, including a damaged ear and puncture wounds on his head (kitty is not retreating from battle);
• not altered;
• not micro-chipped;
• very sweet. He sat without protest for a blood-draw.

Based on this, the vet concluded that Kitty Friend is a great cat with a neglectful owner and that I am well within my rights to find him a new and better home. As I type, Kitty Friend is in my basement, hiding under a couch. I hate to deprive him of a sunny spring day on my deck, but tonight he’s heading to my in-laws for a shot at an infinitely better life, and I can’t take any chances he’ll disappear again.

But you know what the best part is? The best part is that the next time Simon asks about Kitty Friend, I get to tell him that Kitty Friend is going to Grandma and Papaw’s house for a bit. We’ll both like the sound of that.