As he got sick, I thought the silence was going to be loudest in the obvious places: when he couldn’t walk out to the cat shack anymore, when he couldn’t come stand on the porch, when I couldn’t turn my head and see him there.

I thought that silence would slice me clean in half.

But what I didn’t realize is… it wasn’t true silence yet.

The first time I pet an orange blur was shortly after Cutter died. And I got that giddy feeling in my stomach followed immediately by the thought:

“Oh, I can’t wait to tell Cutter!”

I even moved in excitement toward the cat shack door to go tell him… before reality caught up with me and the drop in my stomach anchored me to the floor.

That’s where the magic lived. Not in the big moments. In the everyday ones.

They may not understand stage four…

but they feel it in the quiet where he used to stand.