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I never meant to love her. That was the first mistake.

The late winter sun was setting over the parking lot when I saw her – a tiny ball of fur determinedly wobbling toward me. I remember thinking, “No, please don't. I already have a dog. My life is organized, planned. I don't need complications.”

But there she was, flopping onto her back, tiny paws batting at the air like she'd rehearsed this moment. Her eyes held that peculiar wisdom kittens sometimes have, as if she knew exactly what she was doing to my carefully maintained emotional boundaries. The pavement was still warm from the day's heat, and all I could think was how it would feel under her delicate body when the cars came rushing in tomorrow morning.

"Just for tonight," I whispered to myself, scooping her up. "Tomorrow, straight to the shelter. Don't even think about naming her."

That night, something extraordinary happened. Jueves, my dog, met her. I expected the usual chaos that comes with introducing a dog to a cat. Instead, this unnamed kitten took one look at him and decided he was her mother.

The sight of this tiny creature attempting to nurse from my bewildered dog melted something in me. But I held firm. "She's just 'Cat,'" I'd tell anyone who asked. "She's temporary." Even as weeks turned into months, and months into years, she remained simply "Cat" – my final fortress against complete attachment.

Jueves and Cat developed their own language. She appointed herself his guardian, patrolling windows, demanding with insistent meows that he come inside when he lingered in the yard. Their bond defied my attempts at emotional distance, weaving itself into the rhythm of our daily lives.

Then Jueves left us. Cancer took him away from us.

The first 3 AM after he passed, I woke to Cat's frantic meowing. There she was, running from window to window, calling for him just as she always had. My initial reaction was frustration – “Please, not now. I can barely handle my own grief.”

But as I watched her continue her ritual night after night, something shifted in my understanding. She wasn't just acting out of habit; she was mourning him in the only way she knew how. While I processed my grief through tears and memories, she processed hers through this nightly vigil, maintaining her role as his guardian even across the veil of existence.

Now, when the clock strikes three and her meows echo through the house, I no longer try to quiet her. Instead, I whisper, "Yes, I miss him too." Sometimes I imagine him is out there, just beyond the window, wagging his tail at our shared remembrance. In those moments, I realize that grief itself is a form of love that transcends species, names, and all our careful plans to keep our hearts protected.

She never did make it to that shelter.

I never did name her properly. She's still just "Cat." But perhaps that simplicity holds its own profound truth – some bonds don't need elaborate names to be real. They just need to be honored, even at 3 AM, when the world is quiet enough to hear the echo of a love that refuses to be temporary.