Six years ago, I had a dog for exactly one week.
Only one week.
At the time, both of my parents were at work during the day, so it was just my grandmother and me at home. My grandmother disliked small animals. Really, she disliked anything alive. That included my father. I was told that when she was younger, she would often send him to the neighbors to be looked after simply because she did not like having him around. Plants were no exception either. My grandfather once kept a jasmine plant—white blossoms, fragrance filling the house—and it died after my grandmother poured hot water on it.
So of course she did not like the dog.
What I still do not understand is why she did not take it up with my parents directly. Instead, she performed everything in front of me. She pretended to have heart problems. She cried and made a scene. I was still a child then; how could I tell what was real and what was not? She was family, someone important, and I was terrified that she might die and I would never see her again. Children are naive like that. The clearest memory I have is her telling me to pat her arm. I was panicking, frightened, and exhausted, my hand so sore it was shaking, but I did not dare stop.
Years later, she brought it up again and said with a casual laugh, “I was faking it.”
To this day, her heart still beats steadily and strongly. Back then, though, I was the one who was nearly scared into a heart attack.
That week felt endless. Looking back now, it was only seven days. Time in childhood was strange—no matter how it passed, it never seemed to end.
Then the dog was sent away.
My father drove us to a place far from home. I sat in the car without much feeling. I looked at the dog in the cage beside me without much feeling. I thought about everything that had happened over those seven days and still felt almost nothing. I did not know what I was supposed to feel. Was I meant to be heartbroken because a companion was being forced out of my life? Or relieved because I was about to be freed from all of this? I felt nothing I could name.
It was a long drive. My mother and I sat there the whole time without saying a word.
When we arrived, I was still numb. We got out, opened the cage, and led the dog out. Its new owner took the leash, and from that moment on it no longer had anything to do with me. They did not take the cage. It was kept behind, supposedly as something to remember it by.
The bond had only lasted seven days. It was not that deep, I told myself. Not that deep.
After the handoff, my mother exchanged a few adult pleasantries with the other person. I did not pay attention. I would not have understood anyway. I have almost no memory of that part.
Back in the car, I still did not know what I was supposed to feel. I looked at the empty cage beside me and felt nothing. It was over. I had made it through. My mother and I still did not speak.
But after we got out of the car at home, my mother started crying first. I have never been able to stand seeing someone else cry, so I cried too.
That was the day a confused child learned two things at once: how to cherish, and how to hate.
Later, my mother showed me posts from the dog's new owner. It was living in a bigger house. It had lots of toys. It had people to play with. It looked happy.
I cried again.
Even now, if I think about it, tears still come. Seven days is not long. Seven days should not be enough to matter that much. And yet it does.
Not long after the dog was gone, my mother stopped working. Maybe she finally saw what my days at home had really been like. Maybe she was simply tired. Either way, I no longer had to face my grandmother every day.
When I think back on 2019, only three things stand out clearly: the seventieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the dog leaving, and the cat arriving.
Three months later, a relative who ran a cattery gave us a kitten. A British Shorthair, blue-gray all over, not especially pretty. I had always loved cats, though. Pretty or ugly made no difference to me.
Back then I posted constantly on social media. Big things, small things—I wanted to record everything. Because of that, I ended up saving many photos and videos of this cat. We named her Sixi. I have already forgotten why.
By then, I had learned what it meant to cherish something. I cherished her fiercely. I did not want anyone touching her.
Once, the kitchen window had not been shut properly, and Sixi climbed out onto the enclosed outer frame, craning her head forward to peer outside. I did not think at all. I ran over immediately, stepped onto the frame myself, and pulled her back in. That night I volunteered to sleep alone. I lay facedown on my pillow and cried all night, because I was so afraid of losing her.
Time moves faster and faster now.
It has been six years. She is six years old. She is getting old.
I am so afraid of losing her.
Today I gathered up a lot of shed cat fur. I am afraid not only of losing her, but of her being forgotten. Once forgotten, it feels as if nothing is left at all.
And when I think carefully about it, I have not been good enough to Sixi. Over the past two years especially, I have hardly spent proper time with her. But she has always wanted me near. When I am away, she lies on my clothes, on my bedding. When I come back, she follows me everywhere I go. At night she climbs to the edge of my pillow, stretches out a paw, then flops over and exposes her belly completely. When I sit at my desk, she sprawls over my papers. When I am at the computer, she claims the mouse pad.
Sixi is usually quiet, sparing with her voice. But after I had been away from home for a month, when she finally saw me again, even she could not help crying out. She rubbed her head hard against my leg. In her eye sockets sit two clear amber stones, and she always looks at me with that same gentleness, blinking slowly.