Love Saves the Day

“Don’t leave,” Sarah says. “Please don’t leave us.” Her voice sounds different, a little deeper than normal maybe, and I wonder why she’s asking me to stay. Where would I go? And why is she saying us? There’s only one of her. When I look up at her, her eyes are full of sorrow. The skin of her forehead puckers just a little above the inner corners of her eyebrows. But the brush feels so comfortable, and Sarah smells so warm and safe, that my eyes start to close before I can think any more about that. I feel a purr start in my throat, spreading its warmth into my chest.

That’s when Sarah starts to sing. Her singing voice also sounds different, like maybe it’s the voice of someone I’ve heard talk before, but who I’ve never heard sing. This is strange, because singing is almost the first thing I ever heard Sarah do. The voice is Sarah and not-Sarah at the same time. Still, it’s a voice I know I could listen to forever and be happy. It sounds the way love feels.

Prudence, the voice sings, open your eyes. I don’t want to open them, though. I’m too comfortable and sleepy. But the voice keeps singing and saying, Dear, dear Prudence … won’t you open up your eyes? My little love. It’s so insistent that I have no choice. I have to fight with my eyelids, which have become heavy and stubborn. There’s a powerful light over my head, hurting my eyes and pushing my eyelids down. I finally pry them apart, and it takes a moment to focus and see things around me clearly.

When I look up, it’s not Sarah’s face I see. It’s Laura’s.

“Dr. DeMeola!” Laura cries. “She’s awake!” The blurry shape of a familiar-looking woman drifts through my vision, somewhere behind where Laura is standing. Laura’s smiling, and there are tears in her eyes. I don’t realize I’m on my side until I feel her hand start to rub gently behind my right ear, the one that isn’t pressed against whatever it is I’m lying on. There are bad smells in this place—scary smells—but Laura’s Laura-smell is stronger than they are as she continues to stroke behind my ear and down the length of my body. I try to lift my backside the way I usually do when my back is scratched like this. But my body won’t move when I tell it to, so I blink once at her, slowly, instead.

Laura brings her mouth close to my ear and murmurs, “Don’t scare us like that again, little girl. We need you to stay with us. Can you do that, Prudence?” Her eyes look into mine, and I recognize her expression. It’s the one I used to see on her face sometimes when she looked at Sarah. I used to wonder what that look meant, but now I know. Her eyes are filled with love.

My throat is raw and scratchy. It feels like something bad happened to it. But I’m still able to answer with a faint Mew.

“Good,” Laura murmurs, and she kisses my forehead.

From the cage they make me sleep in (I have to sleep in a cage!), I can smell nervous cats all around me. They stand and pace, hoping to find some warm new corner or a way to get out they haven’t discovered already. Their movements disturb the air and make my whiskers tickle. At night, when most of the humans who work here have left, some of the cats cry out, wanting their own humans to come and take them home. But I never cry. Sarah is never coming back for me.

There are whole chunks of pink skin showing on my front paws, where my beautiful white fur used to be. One of the stabbing people here shaved the fur off so they could attach dripping tubes. Sarah was the first one who ever said my white paws looked like human socks. Now, with so much of the fur missing, they don’t look like socks at all. I lick and lick at the spots where fur is supposed to be and think, This is what happens when the human you love dies. Pieces of you go missing.

But Laura will always come back for me. I saw it in her eyes when she sang to me and woke me up. When I think about Laura singing the Dear Prudence song, the hole in my chest from missing Sarah begins to fill. There’s something growing there. Soon it will fill up the whole space.