a small goodbye

i'll love you forever Tobi

I’m in my temporary residence, music playing softly in the background, finally weaving in the ends of my last crochet project. My hands know what to do without thinking, so my mind drifts.

I found a single strand of cat hair caught in the yarn. It’s so small, so ordinary. Yet it stopped me. It still doesn’t feel real that he’s gone.

*

My life in Toronto was complicated. A home that never quite felt like home, no matter how I arranged it. Quiet in a way that echoed. I adopted Tobi to soften that silence, to fill the spaces that felt too big for one person. And he did, in all the ways that mattered.

If you had met Tobi, you would have understood immediately how special he was. He was cautious at first, always observing, deciding if you were worth his trust. But once you earned it, he was warm, affectionate, quietly devoted. He had a scrappy little edge to him, too. He was playful, a bit stubborn, and full of personality. He wasn’t just company. He was presence. He made things feel lived in.

Now there’s a heaviness in my chest, a lump in my throat that doesn’t quite go away. I keep thinking about afternoons like this one, the kind we’ll never share again. I can see him so clearly. Stretched out beside me in a patch of sunlight, completely at ease. Every so often, he’d get up and nudge me, asking for attention in his own gentle way. A few pets, purring gently, a quiet moment together, and then he’d return to his spot, content just to be near me.

Those small, ordinary rhythms feel impossibly big now.

I’m sorry I left you. That thought lingers more than I want it to. I wish you could have made it here, could have seen Florida with me. I imagine how you would have found your favourite window, how the sunlight would have followed you across the floor. I think you would have loved it, the warmth, the brightness, the way the air feels softer here.

I carry you with me in these quiet moments. In the music, in the stillness, even in the strands of yarn. In the way I pause, expecting to feel you nearby.

You were never just there to fill the loneliness. You changed it. You made space feel like something we shared.

And even now, somehow, it still feels like we do.