i feel safe when i'm out of place

so today furball (r) died. my father said he heard her clawing away at her scratching post and then a thump, and when he turned around to look, she was just lying there, gone.
i - we - got her a few months after we got honza. he was acting erratic and crying, to the extent that the vet suggested he might be crazy and might need to be put to sleep. for trivia lovers out there, that's a great line for making a grown man cry, or at least me, if i qualify as a grown man.
instead we thought that honza might just be lonely, so we got him a friend. somewhat famously in the mitya family mythology, she came from a rather dicey pet store in spanish harlem, where they brought her and one other kitten out of some dark basement storage. she was maybe six weeks old --…