08/25/2026
An open letter to HER best friend:
Hey Max,
She's doing ok now. It's been almost three months since we ran out of time to truly become friends, and I worried for her since before I had to make the choice for you.
You were her safety, and her security blanket, and the reason she came for food everyday. She followed you anywhere and everywhere, and you were the thing that cut through all other things for her and made life worth living.
Most people probably couldn't tell you apart because she could have just passed for being your shadow on the ground. After you were gone, she disappeared for a week, and I thought my decision had killed her too. I strongly debated sending her with you, but she was healthy, and circumstances wouldn't allow it, no matter how much I thought that would be better for her. It broke my heart to separate you.
When she finally reappeared, it was even more clear just how badly she needed you, but now she was too terrified to come to my feeding spot without you, and clearly had been driven from her little spot of territory she lived in with you. You had made that little bit of home possible.
I remember crying for her, seeing her fear and insecurity without you, and I had no way to even catch her and try to send her back to you. The only thing I could do was try to teach her, without you, that she is safe, and loved, and she has somebody who worries for her.
She's been coming twice a day for an entire bowl of wet food on my front steps. I'm pretty sure she doesn't hunt or eat otherwise. I can open the gate without her running away, she just quietly waits on the bottom step for me to put the bowl down, close the gate and back away. But she knows her name, or the one I gave her at least, and she comes when I call. I changed how I feed the whole crew, just to try to convince her there was safety next to the scary human place.
You would be so proud of her. Every setback, I ask you to look out for her, to tell her that whatever thing that scared her, I won't let it hurt her.
Today was the first day, without you, that she got up on the porch fence. I approached with her bowl full of food and she didn't run. I didn't dare get too close - a little farther away than she allows now with the gate opening and closing between us on the steps. But she stayed. She let me put the food bowl down near her, and back away.
I kept all my other porch residents busy while I watched over her, and she got down off the railing, and ate. She had a full meal, on the porch, inside the boundary of somewhere she has never dared to tread without you.
I am so proud of her, and I miss you for her, but I think, even if I never touch her, she just might truly let me try to be her mom. I already decided I was, but it's a different thing for her to allow it.
Be proud of her, and watch over her. You mattered too.
Pictured 1 and 2, is Max, a cat I honestly thought belonged to my neighbor only to discover he was yet another stray, and I'd been calling him by a name that wasn't his until it was, anyway. His best friend, is Dahlia. I TNRed her last year, never thinking I'd truly need to intervene with her again, because she stuck to him like glue.
But, he was in bad shape, couldn't eat, had an abcess the size of a soft ball on his jaw - probably from fighting and trying to protect her as he was neutered, and thin as a rail. There was nothing else I could do, and we ran out of time for me to keep trying to win him over and get him any kind of help, so all I could do in the end was grant him mercy, and hope she would be ok.
Next pictures 3-5 is 3 months ago, a few days before I made the decision, for Max, and today, with little Dahlia, finally seeming to make *true* progress and I have hope that wherever I land, I might be able to convince her friendship isn't the worst idea, and take her with me to be sure she's looked after. The rest of the outside friendlies are coming with me, no matter what, but the idea of leaving her here, alone again, just makes me ill, and I've been working for months to convince her to come close enough that when it's time I can make sure she is never truly alone ever again.
