It’s a hard morning here waking up without Chocolate Milk. The girls are struggling to process her passing. It’s difficult because she’d become a part of the routine. Check on her (and the other kittens: the buñuelos) as we called them because they were babies and their mother’s name is Fritter; feed them and play with them throughout the day; and then go to feed them at night. The girls would come to my office and be like “let’s go see the cats.” Every few hours we built them into our routine. And the cats loved to be close to us, they spend countless hours on the windowsills of the girls’ bedrooms or on my office window or the bathroom (like Chocolate Milk did two nights ago) or in the video game room.
And they have been such a part of planning. The three buñuelos are so close we were struggling with the idea of separating them and were trying to figure out how to move them with us in the future. The girls were dreaming of future two decades with these three siblings living with them. We’ve been watching over them since they were so tiny and we failed this one. This is one we saved from drowning in such a panic.
Now it is going to be so hard to look at Orange Juice and ‘Mæra without seeing the ghost missing between them. Calling them the buñuelos will always remind us that the other little buñuela isn’t there. Chocolate Milk was the mirror image of her dad, who sits in the garage watching over them at night from afar. She had one white leg and one sleeved tabby leg reversing his own markings. He went to her when she was hurt and we think she was with him when she collapsed; he likely only left when we gathered around her. He called for her long into the night last night, it’s heartbreaking. He did come into the kitchen at one point, something we’ve not seen him do in many months.
Liesl was up early and still crying. She sat out on the veranda with Dominica and played Animal Crossing on her Nintendo Switch to try to keep occupied.
Luciana didn’t get up until the afternoon. She was feeling a little less sad than last night. But she was sad enough that it seemed to have induced an anxiety attack or something akin to it and she was unable to eat for most of the day.
I was mostly able to stay busy today and not have to think about it too much. This morning I was very sad. I went out several times and spent some time with the remaining kittens. I’ve not seen either of the parents today.