nermal ovenbird As soon as I could form words, I started asking for a cat. I wanted a cat. I NEEDED a cat. I wouldn’t stop talking about cats. I had stuffed cats. I drew pictures of cats. In Kindergarten the nametag on my coat room cubby was an orange tabby and I was sure this was a sign from the universe. If there was a cat on my cubby then I was in the right place. When I was six years old my exhausted parents finally capitulated. We went to a shelter. We found a calico named Nermal and I was allowed to bring her home. The first day she hid behind the refrigerator, but by the end of the day she had installed herself in my lap permanently. I had never loved a non-human creature so much. Holding her soft, purring body was like having an antidote to sadness. She was alert and alive and mine. She lived six months. We had only had her a short time when we discovered she had feline leukemia. My parents couldn’t afford treatment or interventions. We made her a nest of blankets in the open drawer beneath my bed and that is where she lived out her final days. I spent every afternoon holding her. I begged her to get better. “I need her to live,” I said to my grandmother one day. “Let’s cross our fingers,” she said. Nermal did not live. I never crossed my fingers again. On her last day the whole family sat on the couch and held her. I sank my fingers into her fur. My father gave me her collar–blue with a tag–then he took her from my arms and brought her to a death that I hope was kind. I set about planning a funeral. I went door to door, knocking, and asking my friends to come. I gathered a crowd of about five children, then I stood on the picnic table in my backyard and gave a speech. I said every single thing in my heart out loud. I told Nermal I would miss her. I said that she was the very best cat to have ever lived. I said that I loved her. Then I placed her collar in a Winnie-the-Pooh pencil tin, dug a hole in the garden, and buried it. I had other cats in the years that followed, but none like her. She was a messenger. She taught me how to love without language. She showed me how to curve your spine just so, to encircle your beloved completely. She could speak in rumbles that turned her into a small thunderstorm of affection and I can still feel the scant eight pounds of her pinning my spirit to this earth, making everything real. She was the briefest, most transient little life, abandoned to the shelter then given six months of all the devotion my tiny heart could offer. Thirty-six years later I still haven’t really forgiven the universe for taking her away but I hope my child’s hands felt like comfort. I hope I taught her what humans do when they love without language. 250627 what's it to you? who go blather from