Katie Vaca

And that was it.

And in 2017, Matt died, and I was devastated.

And I felt this deep feeling of regret, not having had the opportunity, but more importantly, the courage to have told my friend how much he meant to me while he was here.

I didn't tell him that I loved him.

I didn't tell him that he had changed my life for the better.

I didn't tell him that he was one of the best people I had the privilege of knowing.

And I didn't tell him how much I would miss him when he was gone.

Later that year, his girlfriend decided it was time to get her life back on track and move back to California.

And in the process, she couldn't bring her cat with her to the apartment she had found.

And without hesitation, I said I would take him, and I immediately started having anxiety.

Because while I knew and liked Frank, my husband's cat, I was not sold on cats.

I was still really scared of them, and I had visions of this

thing coming into my life and being really mean and destroying my house.

But I did it without hesitation because it felt like something I could grab onto, something that I could do for my friend by lightening the load for someone that had loved and cared for him during his time of need.

And luckily for me, aside from taking a massive dump on my brand new couch the first night he was in our home,

Juan Carlos, the giant Russian blue cat, is one of the nicest animals you'll ever meet.

He's a stage five clinger.

He wants to snuggle me from head to toe, and he's part of the family.

In the fall of last year, Frank got really sick, my husband's cat, my first cat friend, and he was dying of kidney failure.

And we had to take him to the vet for that awful vet appointment that I had only ever heard about.