Grief does things to people. It has been bothering me that I don’t have any of the orange feathers from Inigo’s legs. I last saw one in the kitchen earlier this year, and foolishly thinking that there would be more chances to save one, I didn’t pay it much mind and eventually it disappeared. I had about given up when tonight I got the strongest feeling that there was one somewhere in the apartment. I looked in his carrier. No. I took apart the dust trap in the dryer. Nope, not there either, though I did find a couple of his woodchips. 

“The kitchen.”

It was like a whisper. 

But I thought, no, that one is gone.

“Another.”

So I started looking in all the places that I haven’t cleaned in the last two weeks, if ever, places where a tiny feather might have landed and been covered in dust.

I got a flashlight and pulled the refrigerator out, and there it was, on the floor, between the refrigerator and the wall, with a little dust bunny. It’s not the same one I lost. That one was a little fuller. But it’s a feather from one of his “socks” and it is one of the most precious things I will ever have. 

Just when I start to think his presence is fading and that he’s leaving, he reminds me that he never will.