To remember that we’ve spent almost 18 years together and that we’re best friends. That we’ve carried each other and comforted each other through so much.

There was that time I had to climb fifty feet up a tree with hardly any limbs with ropes and a harness to get him when the crows goaded him into climbing higher. The rusty antique farm equipment below would have mangled him had he fallen. I had to lift him with one hand, balanced, hoping he would roll out of my grip, and put him in a cinch top bag with a rope attached to lower him to my wife on the ground. Once he reached her hands, I broke down and sobbed while I made my way to them. I was so scared. I woke up the next day and he was curled up around my hand, holding tightly. He didn’t want to go outside for months.

He pees on me regularly now. Sometimes when I come home with my hands full and can’t give him attention immediately. Sometimes when I’ve been home all day and he didn’t get a snack fast enough. Maybe his kitten baby sister is trying to play with him or he’s stuck on the other side of the door while I’m brushing my teeth. He has hyperthyroidism and kidney disease. We give him everything, do the best we can for his health care, but it’s getting close to the time we say goodbye and it’s breaking my heart.

I just wish he’d remember me the way I remember him.

I lifted him onto my lap yesterday morning, out of the reach of his gentle but playful six month old kitten sister. He peed all down the front of me. I didn’t scold; I just held him until he was done, knowing the last time I hold him isn’t far away.