2005-01-12 - 11:16 a.m.

Please have good thoughts in your heart for my dear little kitty, Star, who passed away today due to complications from angina.

She's had a long, happy life, full of sleeping in sunbeams and chasing mice and playing hide-and-seek around the couch. She was always there for a cuddle when I was ill or upset, and she would bring me nice, fat mice whenever I came home from college. She was always a little shy, but enjoyed walking with the family through the woods, and had become more cuddly in her old age.

I'm glad that she lived to a ripe old age, and that she's never had any trouble until now, but that's just given me more time to love her, and I'm really going to miss her. My life has been relatively free of loss; she's the closest "person" to me to ever die. I have no idea what happens after death, but I hope she goes to a place where there's plenty of tuna and someone to give her a scratch behind the ears and a tickle on the chin.

Goodbye, little girl. I'll always have a place for you in my heart.