{Animal Welfare Week: Guest Post} L.A. Kornetsky, author of A Gin & Tonic Mystery Series

L. A. Kornetsky is the author of two previous Gin & Tonic mysteries.  She lives in New York City with two cats and a time-share dog, and also writes fantasy under the name Laura Anne Gilman.

She welcomes visitors to www.lauraannegilman.net, @LAGilman and Facebook L-A-Kornetsky.

Guest Post:

I’m getting ready for a move, and part of that is decluttering.  Getting rid of things – objects, old paperwork – that I don’t need to haul with me any more.

But in a folder of otherwise no-longer-needed papers, there’s a sheet I’m keeping.  It’s from the ASPCA, and it documents my adoption of the kitten once known as Minna, who became my beloved Pandora, gone now a little over a year.

There’s no point to keeping the sheet of paper.  All it does is say that I paid x amount for a 4 month old female tiger kitten, spayed.  But throwing it out isn’t an option, either.  Because this was the first connection I had to Pandora, the first contract we made with each other: I would give her food, shelter, care, and a lap when she wanted it.  I would give her a home.  And in return, she gave me such love and companionship, letting her go at the end was no less a pain than losing a human friend.

I don’t have documentation from Indy-J, who was found on the street as a weeks-old kitten, and lived a long and adventurous life before cancer took her in 2000.  But Pandora’s adoption paper will go in the current file, along with the papers for  our current residents, Boomerang (aka Boomer you idiot), and Castiel the Kitten of Thursday (aka DamnitCas).

Because you keep the important moments, the documents that say “this is how you changed my life.”

(and some of you may note that I invite disaster in the renaming of my cats.  You would not be wrong.  But where’s the fun of living with Sir Napsalot?)

Previous Animal Welfare Week Posts:

Book Spotlight of COLLARED by L.A. Kornetsky

Book Spotlight of FIXED by L.A. Kornetsky

Book Spotlight of DOGHOUSE by L.A. Kornetsky

Book Excerpt of DOGHOUSE by L.A. Kornetsky