Cirrus, My Sweet Boy

Hi Cirrus. I’m glad you’re finally home.

I want to say a few words, things I need to say out loud, to share how wonderful you were and to help me keep going.

First the obvious. I love you so much little Special. And I miss you. You brought me so much happiness and contentedness, and I loved making you happy and giving you the same things you gave me. I was so proud to see you at peace here at home, never stressed, calm and happy all the time. And I know eventually I’ll get past my grief and I’ll feel real joy knowing how wonderful your life was, and truly proud that I kept every promise I made to you.

Cirrus, you were with me for 17 years, a witness to the worst and best times of my life. You helped me through the pandemic, when I was so isolated I had no one else to talk to or be with, and later when I met and married Miguel and the three of us made up a little clan that you loved being a part of. You inspired my music and my novel, and you’re immortalized in my writing and in photos and videos, and in the memories of everyone who ever met you.

There are things about you, big and small, I never want to forget. Like the daily habits I adopted that reinforced that you were here. Looking for you in the front window whenever I came home, watching out for you when I opened the front door, checking around my feet when I pushed my chair back (or took any step around the apartment). Glancing reflexively at your food bowl to make sure you weren’t hungry. Even feeling guilty for not emptying your litter box right away.

I want to remember how willing and eager you were to let me pick you up and carry you around, and how it felt to hold you close to me in both of my arms. Holding you up to the bathroom window so you could feel the breeze and hear the birds and see the yard. I want to remember what it feels like to use my “cat voice” with you. The feeling of your little head under my hand when I petted you. And your soft tummy when I wrapped my arms around you on the bed and cuddled you with your head resting on my forearm.

I want to remember how you often stared straight into my eyes with a calm expression of recognition and awareness. How you learned to recognize your name. And how after I cut your nails you’d trot excitedly to the kitchen alongside me for your treat.

I want to remember the sound of you hopping down to the floor. How you’d follow me around, never wanting to let me out of your sight. And once I sat down, how you’d leap up on my lap and stay there for as long as I did, even if I played video games all night.

The story of “Derek and Cirrus” is long and includes so much, which is exactly why losing you so suddenly hurts so bad. You and the joy you brought to me were vital to my existence and irreplaceable.

In closing I want to say that, even though I adopted you when you were already a year old, I like to think that the whole time you were just waiting for me to come along. And that when I showed up at your cage in February 2009, you reached out to me in recognition, happy that I’d finally come to take you home so we could start our story. When you arrived at our apartment you were immediately at peace. You fell asleep on my lap with my hand on your shoulder. I’ll never, ever forget how magical that was.

I never believed in things like fate or destiny, but I can’t help but believe that you and I found each other for a reason, that destiny brought me to you, and that whatever forces exist out there will enable me, someday, to be with you again.

I love you so much Cirrus, my sweet boy.