We need to talk. Or at least I need to, just to get this off my chest. I think you have something to say too, but I’m fine talking alone. It seems to be the only talking I do these days where anybody’s listening. Anyway, I want a cat. A little fuzzy one that purrs and walks around with its tail swishing in the air. It wouldn’t be too hairy, like those poofy things with hair nine inches long and their coats so thick the only way you can tell which end you’re looking at is their little green eyes staring out at you. But it wouldn’t be hairless either, like the ones from Egypt. They’re so sad to look at, like their mothers struggled so hard to bring them into the world that they couldn’t even give them a nice fur coat. No, I want a Goldilocks cat. Not too hairy, not too bald. Something like Ms. Rodriguez’s cat. I saw the two of them yesterday when I walked back from the mailbox. They were sitting on her whitewashed porch and looking happy. Truly happy, like we used to be. I wanted to run back into the house and cry, but I needed to know what kind of cat could make someone so content and willing to sit in the summer heat. So I swallowed back the tears and walked up her driveway. I asked her what kind of cat it was, and she said it was a British Shorthair. Said his name was Lobo because that was exactly the wrong name for a cat and sometimes a thing needs to be incredibly wrong so everything else can be right. I smiled and pretended I understood. So I want a British Shorthair. A grey one with a little puffy coat that feels like the softest pillow giving way under your touch. We can pet it at night after we come back home or huddle inside from the next hurricane deciding to come up the Gulf. It won’t matter though, with this little ball of fluff sitting on our knees and acting like it’s just another thunderstorm we’ll all get through. Don’t say we can’t afford it. You know we can. We have plenty of money, now that the nursery isn’t filled and the crib’s returned and all we have left of her is the robin egg blue paint on the walls we thought her eyes would be like when she came. It was the kind of pain I was ready for, that couple of weeks in discomfort and the hours of agony on the hospital bed to bring something into the world that would outlast me and be wonderful in ways we can only imagine. But I’m not ready for this pain. This terrible nothingness inside and out. I don’t even have you to help. You’ve said maybe seven sentences to me since then, all in the same shaky timbre you had when your mother died. So I’m getting a cat whether you want it or not. I told you I wanted to talk, not argue. It’s not because I blame you or hate living in this empty house with you. I just need something, anything that will let me love it in the way I was supposed to love her. It won’t be the same, but just close enough that I can go on without wanting to cry all the time and can act like something new came into our lives. Please don’t say anything, even if you agree. Don’t shake your head or nod, just sit there with your book on ancient Assyria and stare with your blank face. That’s all I need to know you’re still here. That you love me and will start trying again someday to be the man from long ago who promised to make my life paradise and delivered on it for years. I know you can do it. You just need time. Like me. Don’t worry. The cat will make things better. In the big ways and the small. It has to. I don’t know what I will do if it doesn’t. I don’t know what we’ll do.