oh my god i have been so sick. i feel like i dropped into the bardo and have been trying to keep my head above water for the past week. i am slowly returning to the land of the living, although i still don’t have my voice back yet.

somewhere in this mix of suffering, there have been little joys. poppy has been named. it happened as i suspected – once the correct name entered my head, i couldn’t see her as anything else. i had a list of names i wanted her to have but none of them fit like this. she has also bonded hard with circe. circe was hesitant at first. she hissed and stalked her like she couldn’t believe the audacity. but after three days, a switch flipped. or rather, poppy flipped. poppy playfully fell over in front of circe and made her soften. that was it. they’re now inseperable best friends. i’ve actually never seen circe so happy.

a year and a half ago, circe was in the shelter with her sister. they were both very sick. her sister was adopted – and then died that night at her new home. the staff asked me if i would foster circe, who had been alone since her sister’s adoption. they said they didn’t expect her to last through the night and didn’t want her to die in the shelter. i agreed and took this half dead kitten home.

somehow, circe did make it through the night. that began the long, miraculous, and slightly illegal road of getting a diagnosis, medication, and healing from fip. when i say miraculous, i mean it. there were so many crazy synchronicities and death-defying moments. every vet that saw her didn’t understand how she was still alive. i still can’t believe we made it out of that. 

since she’s recovered, i’ve had a nagging worry that she still felt her sister’s absence. i don’t know what cats know, but there was a part of her that seemed quieter. more reserved. half of my motivation for getting poppy was for myself, but the other half was wanted to see how circe would do with a cat who could help fill the void her sister left. watching poppy coax joy out of circe has been everything i could have hoped for. here’s to circe finding a little part of herself again.