It is with a sad heart that we have to report the death of our cat. We saw her struck by a car this evening try­ing to run to us across the overly busy street in front of our house. Unfortunately, this is some­thing we half expected to hap­pen at some point because of her being an out­door cat and us liv­ing on a road with too much fast traffic.

Our cat had many names, the neigh­bors called her Hannah while we called her Misato or Kitty Girl. She was an inde­pen­dent cat who adopted us after we moved into our house. We befriended her wile tak­ing a break from home improve­ments to eat fried chicken on our front porch. After that, we enjoyed many affec­tion­ate days and nights with her. She never scratched any­thing, never went to the bath­room in the house, nor attacked any­one. She was always ready for a good belly rub and loved to sleep with us, curled up at the foot of our bed. I am going to espe­cially miss her help­ing Kelly to wake me up in the morn­ing and the late nights she spent curled in my lap while I watched foot­ball on TV. Even now I can’t help but keep an ear out for her cry­ing to be let inside.

Mankind is meant to com­mune with all ani­mals but those we con­nect with strongest are given the sta­tus of “pet.” There is a pow­er­ful rela­tion­ship that devel­ops between us and our pets. Two dif­fer­ent species who begin with lit­tle com­mon lan­guage, cul­ture, or biol­ogy. Yet some­how, a bond is grown that exceeds coöper­a­tive sur­vival and pro­gresses towards an intan­gi­ble rela­tion­ship that can only be expressed in shared moments. The first time they come to us for com­fort. The way our bod­ies reflex­ively relax when we sit and stroke their fur. The times you become aware that you are read­ing their body lan­guage. Words fail to reveal the com­plex­ity of our connection.

Beautiful cat, we are glad for the time we were allowed to share together.