A Girl's Best Friend

My sweet, funny, fluffy little kitty died yesterday.

There is no phrase in the English language that I can conjour up for this one.

For the past nearly 15 years, Houston has been by my side. Through loves and losses and moves and babies and sickness and health, she's been one of the only constants in my life. When she first came home with me she was so little she could sit in the palm of my hand. She slept on a pillow right next to mine, or, more often, on my head. Her first trick was to sit on my arm while I blow dried my hair, right in the crook of my bicep so she could rub her face on my ear. Okay, that was her only trick. But it was cute.

She never got bigger than 5 lbs, though you wouldn't know it looking at her vast expanse of princess fur. When she was wet the resemblance to a rodent was all too evident--and boy did she know it. Indignance was one of her strongest character traits, and she was no fan of haircuts.

Houston did get older, though, if not bigger. Over the past few years she'd become a bit of a crumudgeon, snipping at anyone who dared to pet her longer than she deemed appropriate. She never drew blood--not even when the kids experimented with their "handling techniques" over and over again. But she became far less tolerant. And she was louder. The Siamese in that Himalayan feline could wake the dead.

The thing about her passing is not so much about how I'll miss her (though the silence waking up this morning without her beseeching yowls for breakfast was deafening), but more about the indication of a chapter in my life having gone by. It's like a big, glaring beacon showing me--yet again--that I'm entering a new phase of my life. As if I needed another one.

I shall miss you, my spoiled little friend. You have been the unconditional love of my life and I can't imagine going through the rest of it without you.