This is a sad one.

When I was a kid, I had a single cat around the house named Mooch, and when I was around eight years old my Dad brought home Mekong. A year or two later was another rainy winter, and my Dad brought home another kitten for my Mom from the local strays in the alleyway we lived in. She was probably directly related to him.

This kitten was white mottled with these beautiful black spots. My Mom instantly fell in love with her and named her Eepo, a fairly crude romanization of the Korean word for "pretty." She was a shy kitten, and she didn't like me and my energy much, but my Mom doted on her.

She would spend all her time around my Mom, and my Mom would sing to her and sometimes dance her around and this kitten completely trusted her. She would curl up on my Dad while he laid on the couch to watch Star Trek. She never spent all that much time around me, but I loved her too. Sometimes late at night in the summers, as I'd be playing Diablo or Chrono Trigger or just messing around on the internet listening to MIDIs of videogame music or Marilyn Manson (as was the style at the time), she'd sit near me and watch me.

I don't have any pictures of her. I think I mentioned before that when I was growing up my folks were too depressed to take photos very often. I took some photos of the cats, but then my folks never took me to get them developed (which was also the style at the time). I just remember how small she was. She was a very tiny cat, even smaller than the one I have now.

My Dad took her to the vet not long after we got her. I'm not sure what prompted him to do that, I remember him always being so money conscious, but my brother insists that he was always a bit reckless and a bleeding heart when it came to animals. I wouldn't describe him that way.

The vet reported that Eepo was born with a misshapen heart. It essentially had a hole in it, and she wouldn't live for very long. The vet gave her 3-6 months.

We were all heartbroken. But my Mom kept doting on her. My Dad explained to me that we'd be kind to her and give her a good life, one that she'd be happy in for as long as she could.

My Mom would sit out back on the porch (such as it was, it was more like a concrete slab that housed a civilization of ants) and make her kimchi and other oriental foodstuffs, and Eepo would be out there with her.

After about a year, we stopped worrying she would die.

My Mom spent a summer on the couch, complaining about my Dad's snoring. She'd fall asleep watching MTV or VH1 every night while I'd be in the corner playing my games. The late 90s were all about Blizzard games. Back in those days it was all about Warcraft, Diablo, and eventually StarCraft.

One night, I remember watching her pant while she sat in my Dad's desk chair. I worried for her. Those days were always filled with worry.

I lived a life of terror back then, being on the watch for my folks' shifting moods, the sadism of the neighbor kid, the othering by teachers for the weirdo. Middle school was hell. All of that was bearable though, the only thing I truly worried about was if Eepo would be alright.

In the Spring of 1999, Eepo was about two years old by that point. Maybe older, I can't clearly remember. The horrid house we lived in was crawling in creatures. Sometimes possums would get into the cupboards, and other times mice and even rats would crawl their way down to the kitchen. The house was effectively condemned and by the end of that year, was actually condemned. We won a hell of a lawsuit.

One night, Eepo started hunting down all the mice. We had a few cats living with us, Mooch, Mekong, another cat that ended up being adopted by someone in a nearby parking lot. But Eepo was the only one who showed any interest in hunting.

And every single time, she'd bring the dead rodent over to my Mom sleeping on the couch, and would plop it down on the floor and sit there patiently waiting for her to wake up and see.

My Mom was so proud of her. She'd praise her for how strong she was, for how much she loved my Mom to bring her the dead mice.

Seriously, that little cat was bringing her a corpse just about every night.

When June rolled around, it was my nephew's first birthday, and my Mom insisted on a lavish traditional Korean birthday party for him. She cooked a big feast and we set out all of the traditional screens and clothes and furniture. My Mom tossed all the cats outside, to keep them from helping themselves.

It was a lovely party. It was the first time we'd seen the kid since he was born. My brother's wife probably insisted on my unstable Mom not being allowed around, but this was the beginning of them relenting, though they never allowed any of the kids to be alone with her, which I think was wise.

The next day, I awoke in the late morning to my Mom screaming that Eepo was dead. I screamed and ran outside where she had fallen asleep under an old engineering drafting table my Dad had left in the yard. It was a nice shaded space with lots of tall grass.

I cried while I wiped the ants off of her and begged her to wake up. I was horrified at how stiff she was. I couldn't believe how different her body suddenly felt to my hands. I'd never touched a dead animal before. My Mom watched me and cried herself. She called my Dad.

My Dad told me to take her to the vet, and I was so horrified, I couldn't touch the body. He told me that he suspected our landlord of poisoning our cats, since Mooch had just disappeared about three months earlier. I tried to explain to him how horrified I was at touching her and he told me in no uncertain terms that if I didn't take the body to the vet right that moment, he'd beat me so hard that I'd forget every other beating he'd ever given me.

I remembered that when he told me ten years later that he never hit me.

I put her into a shopping bag and hung her on my bicycle handle as I rode down the way. The main road through town was being totally rebuilt, so I rode through a rocky dirt badland being careful not to let her drop. I knocked on the Vet's door, but nobody was there.

I returned and called my Dad back, and he told me to take her to the other vet much farther down the road and reiterated his threat. I eventually made my way down there. It was a much nicer clinic, with a big heavy wooden door that was hard for me to open.

The lady at the front desk greeted me, and I told her in a soft voice that I was surprised I possessed that my cat had died that morning and my family wanted to know what happened. She and the doctor were kind to me, which wasn't something I got from a lot of adults at the time. They told me that they would look and I heard the word "necropsy" for the first time. They took Eepo away down the hall carrying her gently. That was the last time I saw her.

My Mom told me that once we got the body back, I'd take her down to the river and would bury her. It horrified me to have to touch her again, it made me so sorrowful to have to say goodbye, but somehow there was some relief in there somewhere. My Dad called back and told me he was proud of me for being able to do it, and that I spared my Mom a load of pain.

I took my bike and rode to a friend's house, where one of my bullies happened to be coincidentally. Once he learned what had happened, he softened. He told me that I'd be great one day, that my other much worse bully is only good at school and that when I found myself, the world would get better. I never saw him again.

Eepo died of the thing she was always going to die of. We'd put it out of mind because she was able to live so much longer than expected, but the hole in her heart guaranteed her an early grave from the outset. We did everything my Dad said we'd do, we gave her a good happy life, and one warm day she took a nap under some shade and never woke up. May we all be so lucky.

My Dad didn't want to pay the vet to get her body back. I waited for the day, mentally preparing myself for taking her body and burying it down by the river, but my Dad was having his own breakdown that a child can't see but an adult can't help but notice. I never brought it up, and he didn't bring it up. I think we were all too heartbroken. Maybe we still are.

My Mom still talks about Eepo, how pretty she was and how wonderful and strong she was, bringing her all those dead rats and mice.

I still remember watching her kill one on a rainy night, how bloody and visceral it was. How I saw into its eyes and saw how much it wanted to live and realizing that all life ending is sad.

I told my Dad soon after that I never heard her purr. He told me that she would sometimes when she felt very comfortable and safe, and assured me we gave her a good life, and that she can go onto whatever else knowing she was loved.

I hope she knows we loved her. I hope wherever she is she's with my Dad now, patiently waiting for my Mom. Far be it from me to speak on matters I know nothing about, but I do hope. Wherever she is now, she was and is loved.