Growing up, I've always had at least one cat in my house, and I remember all of them perfectly.

The first was Killer, a calico with feline schizophrenia that would always cry when she found socks and steal them to carry around (every litter she had was stillborn, and she was sweet when she was around the socks), and she passed away when I was thirteen despite my mom getting her at a year old because she was play aggressive and the family before us was going to put her to sleep.

The next one was Dobby, a little tuxedo boy who lost his mother to a car hitting her, and he wasn't the one from the litter that I wanted to keep. He was adventurous and a bit of a troublemaker, but when we moved out of one place, he stayed because he snuck out and bonded with a family that owned the house he slipped into through the window. I wanted to keep his sister, but the decision was taken out of my hands despite my mom saying that it was my choice for which one we were keeping.

After that was KitKat, a stray who we found that was a complete sweetheart. I bonded to her immediately, and she had a few litters of kittens before she suddenly disappeared (nobody knew what happened to her).

Following shortly after was Fade, a kitten named because of how her fur resembled the Metallica song Fade to Black. For some reason, she would always try to attack me if I showed my legs with shorts or fishnets (the latter was for a costume), and I would constantly run from her because I knew when she'd start stalking me to attack my legs. She had multiple litters of kittens, and one litter resulted in this beautiful silver boy I named Rephiam who was innocent and full of love for everyone. Fade ended up being abandoned (not my choice), and Rephaim was killed by my dog because my ex-stepfather refused to follow the guidelines for feeding that my mom set. We did take in the cat that gave birth to Fade for a time, Yuffy, and after she had a litter of kittens, we gave her to the parents of one of my mom's former clients. That same client's sister also took in a cat we called Baby Girl (shortened to Baby), and mom said no more cats for a while.

We kept that promise until mom got a call that a kitten needed a lot of care and attention since she was the sole survivor of her litter, and her mother had died in labor due to an inability to get her siblings out. It was clear the moment she was brought home that I had bonded to her, and I helped take care of her when she was a kitten as mom declared her a foster failure. We named her Pahli Llama, and she had all sorts of nicknames since she was young. We had her over three years, and we took in another cat named Lillie that my brother's girlfriend ended up gifting to her grandmother, and Llama had a few litters of kittens with a variety of names, but then she got a kitten stuck inside after her last litter. The day I had an appointment, she was found in a horrible condition while trying to find a spot to be alone, and we brought her inside while she refused to eat and her youngest litter was dying of starvation (we tried to feed them, but they wouldn't eat). A few days later, she was found underneath my bed, which was kind of thoughtful of her to pass in a place where we had bonded the most (my room), and I was moving, so it was left to my brother to bury her and her final litter together.

It's now November, and while I've expressed interest in wanting a cat to my boyfriend (he has two cats at his dad's house named Spot and Goob), we know our roommates don't want pets because it'll bring up the rent. He knows how close I was to Pahli, and I wish I could have another one, but it's not in the cards right now.

I don't really get along with my roommates, but they're my boyfriend's friends, so we're dealing with them until we move for his job once he graduates from college. I don't know if I can wait that long, and I miss my cats that have survived and I still have at my mom's house. What am I supposed to do until then?