Last Updated on May 9, 2026 by admin
Tomorrow morning, on Mother’s Day, I am going to sit in the green velvet chair my mother bought herself in 1998 — the one I shipped from Cleveland to Sacramento in a U-Haul I drove for thirty-four hours straight — and I am going to read her name out loud to her cat.
The cat’s name is Posy. She is fourteen. She is the color of weak tea with milk in it. She has my mother’s habits: she does not like to be rushed in the morning, she likes coffee left on the counter long enough to be looked at, and she has a way of staring at the front door at exactly 4:55 p.m. that means where is everyone, and why aren’t they home yet.
My mother died in October.
For eleven years, Posy belonged to her. For seven months, Posy has belonged to me. We are still figuring it out. She still walks to my mother’s bedroom and stands in the doorway, waiting for permission. I haven’t moved the bed. I haven’t moved any of it.
The Quiet Math of a Senior Cat in Mourning
Here is the thing nobody tells you about inheriting a senior cat from a person you have just lost: the cat doesn’t know.
She knows the chair has moved. She knows the smell of the coffee is wrong now. She knows the voice that used to come from the kitchen at 6:42 every morning isn’t coming anymore. But she does not know the word for what happened. She doesn’t know it has a name. She doesn’t know other people had to learn it too.
So she does what cats do when the world stops making sense. She holds her ground. She sits in the doorway. She waits.
Why I Am Going to Say Her Name
I think — and I could be wrong about this, I am wrong about most things — that what Posy is waiting for is the sound.
Not the sound of footsteps. Not the sound of keys. Just the specific shape of Hannah said in the specific way I used to say it when I came in the front door and called up the stairs to my mother on a Sunday afternoon.
So that is what I am going to do tomorrow morning. I am going to sit in the green velvet chair. I am going to put a hand on the small warm spot between Posy’s shoulder blades. And I am going to say my mother’s name out loud, the way I used to say it when she was the one in the chair.
I don’t know what Posy will do. She might not do anything. She might walk away. She might stay.
That isn’t the point.
For Anyone Else Who Inherited a Cat in a Year That Took Too Much
If you are reading this, and there is a cat in your house who used to belong to a person you cannot get back — I see you. I know how strange Mother’s Day weekend gets. I know you have spent the week wondering whether anyone counts you in their list of mothers, or their list of mourners, or their list of anything.
You count. The cat counts. The chair counts. The thing you are about to do tomorrow morning, in the quiet, with no audience — that counts.
Read her name out loud. Read his name out loud. Read the name of whoever the cat is missing as much as you are.
The cat will not say anything back.
That is part of how you know it worked.
🐾
]]>