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Four days a week I drive two hours to feed a cat who won't even look at me. He was my mom's. She died seven weeks ago, and he's been hiding under her bed ever since. I feel terrible because I'm the one who promised her he'd be okay. ⠀ My mom passed in March. Pancreatic cancer. Eight months from diagnosis to the end. ⠀ She lived alone in a small house in upstate New York. My dad died nine years ago, and a week after the funeral she drove to a shelter and came home with an 8-week-old kitten. ⠀ The shelter was an old converted gas station and the whole building smelled like cigarettes — the volunteers all smoked outside the door. Mom thought it was funny. She named him Cigarette. ⠀ For twelve years it was just the two of them. ⠀ And over time they developed the type of bond you only see in movies. She talked to him out loud all day — about the crossword, about the weather, about my dad. ⠀ She would always say Cigarette was the only reason the house didn't feel empty. ⠀ When she got sick, he never left her side. Slept on her chest through chemo. Lay pressed against her leg in the recliner when she couldn't get up anymore. In the last two weeks, when she couldn't really speak, she'd pet him and whisper "good boy" over and over. I'd hear it from the hallway. ⠀ Two days before she died, she held my hand and said: ⠀ "Promise me he gets a great life. Take care of him. He won't understand." ⠀ She was dying. And in that moment, she wasn't thinking about herself at all. ⠀ I promised her. Taking care of Cigarette became the last thing she'd ever ask me for. So it became the only thing that mattered. ⠀ I live two hours away from mom's house. Big apartment, cat-friendly. The plan was simple — bring Cigarette home with me. Give him a great life. Like I promised. ⠀ Before I brought him home, I went on Amazon and bought him everything — cat tree, toys, scratchers, a heated bed. I wanted the apartment perfect for him, so he'd feel right at home. ⠀ That's not what happened. ⠀ I brought him home the day after the funeral. He hid in the carrier for three days. Wouldn't eat. Wouldn't drink. I'd open the door and find him pressed into the back wall, eyes huge, panting. By day four he hadn't peed in 48 hours and I drove him back to mom's house at 11pm crying the whole way. The second I opened the carrier in her kitchen, he ran straight to her bed and went under it. ⠀ He hasn't come out since. ⠀ So now I drive two hours every other day to feed a cat who won't come out from under my mom's bed, still waiting for her to come home. ⠀ Every visit is the same. I unlock the door. The house still smells like mom — lavender hand lotion, the vanilla candle she always burned in the kitchen. ⠀ I call "Cigarette?" Nothing. I refill his food. He's eating maybe a quarter of what he used to. I refill his water. I get on my hands and knees by mom's bed and I can see his eyes glowing in the dark and he doesn't come out, he just stares at me, and I sit on her bedroom floor and I talk to him for twenty minutes about nothing and then I drive two hours home crying. ⠀ He's lost almost two pounds. The vet ran bloodwork — physically fine. "He's grieving," she said. "Some cats do this. Keep him fed. Give it time." ⠀ Give it time. ⠀ I have to sell mom's house. I've been stalling for a month because I don't know what happens to him when the house goes. I can't keep paying the mortgage on an empty house I drive to four times a week. I can't move him to my apartment because last time he almost killed himself in the carrier. ⠀ I'm failing her. Every day he stays under that bed is another day I break the promise I made her. She trusted me with the most important thing she had left. And I'm getting it wrong. ⠀ I called my best friend Sarah on a Saturday morning, three weeks in. Sarah's been a vet for sixteen years. We've known each other since college. I asked if we could get coffee. ⠀ We met at a place near her clinic. I told her everything — the carrier, the hiding, the driving, the two pounds. ⠀ Sarah listened. Then she said: ⠀ "You're giving him nothing to move for. Cats don't just pick up and go — they need a reason, and they need something that still feels like the home they're leaving behind. Right now you're asking him to walk away from your mom completely. Her house, her bed, her smell — everything he's got left of her. So of course he won't come out." ⠀ "So what do I do? I can't keep the house." ⠀ "You have to bridge the two homes. Is there anything at your mom's house he already loves — something you could bring with him to your apartment?" ⠀ "Not really. Ever since mom passed, he just sits under her bed and cries." ⠀ "Then we have to give him something new. Something he's never seen before. Bring it to your mom's house, spray it with her perfume, and let him fall in love with it there — where he already feels safe. Once it's part of his routine, when you move him, you bring it with him. He walks into your apartment carrying the smell of your mom and the thing he loves. That's how you make a cat feel safe somewhere new." ⠀ "What kind of thing?" ⠀ "Get him a Kitty Kurlz." ⠀ I'd never heard of it. ⠀ "It's a scratcher, technically, but it works as a bed too. It makes cats feel safe when they're inside because they can wrap their whole body around it. That's exactly what your cat needs right now. Tight, safe, enclosed. Something to press his body into that smells like her." ⠀ She pulled it up on her phone. It looked like a curled-up snail. ⠀ Honestly, I was skeptical. But at that point I was desperate for anything. ⠀ I ordered them in the parking lot. ⠀ They came three days later. I drove up to mom's that night with one of them on the passenger seat. ⠀ I unboxed it on the living room rug. Bent it in my hands. Sprayed it with Mom's perfume, just like Sarah told me — the bottle was still on her dresser, half full. I sprayed it three times. Set it in the middle of the living room, on the rug where mom used to sit and read with Cigarette on her lap. ⠀ I refilled his food. Kneeled by the bed. Told him I'd see him Tuesday. Drove home. ⠀ Tuesday morning I unlocked the door not expecting anything. ⠀ The Kitty Kurlz wasn't where I left it. ⠀ It was in the hallway. Halfway between the living room and mom's bedroom. Slightly twisted. ⠀ I stood in the doorway for a long time. ⠀ He still wouldn't come out when I called his name. ⠀ I refilled his food and water. Sat on the floor and stared at the scratcher. I picked it up. It still smelled like mom's perfume and faintly like him. ⠀ That night I drove to a Best Buy and bought a little camera. So I could watch him from my phone. I set it up in the living room before I left. ⠀ The next morning I opened the app at 6am sitting up in bed. ⠀ Cigarette was in the Kitty Kurlz. Curled all the way around it. His face pressed into it. Sleeping. ⠀ I watched him for forty minutes. ⠀ He looked completely at peace — I hadn't seen it in 47 days. The last time Cigarette looked like that, he was curled on my mom's chest while she pet him. ⠀ I cried so hard. ⠀ Over the next two weeks I watched him on the camera every morning. He used it constantly. He'd drag it from room to room. He'd press his face into it. He started playing with it too — batting it, wrestling it, doing little bunny kicks. The scratcher would wobble and he'd freeze, then attack it again. He gained back half a pound in nine days. ⠀ Three weeks after Kitty Kurlz arrived, I brought the carrier back to mom's house. ⠀ I put the Kitty Kurlz in the carrier first. Then I picked him up off mom's bed — he let me — and set him in next to it. He got inside and didn't move. ⠀ It was like he understood. ⠀ He didn't cry once on the drive home. ⠀ I set the Kitty Kurlz in the middle of my living room, on the rug. Sprayed it again with mom's perfume. ⠀ He walked out of the carrier, sniffed the air, walked straight to the scratcher, and climbed onto it. ⠀ He slept on it for the rest of the day. ⠀ That was six weeks ago. ⠀ He has the run of my apartment now. He has his spots — the windowsill in the morning, the foot of my bed at night. He eats. He drinks from a glass on my counter, because that's what Mom would do. He drags Kitty Kurlz from room to room with him. Sometimes I find it in the bathroom. Sometimes the kitchen. Wherever he is, it's nearby. ⠀ I bought a second one and put it by my bed. He sleeps on whichever one is closer to me. ⠀ I sold my mom's house last month. I kept her perfume. I spray the Kitty Kurlz every couple weeks. He still presses his face into it when I do. ⠀ My mom asked me for one thing. Take care of him. Give him a great life. ⠀ For seven weeks I thought a great life meant food and water. ⠀ It was more than that. He needed something he loved that reminded him of her. Something that was fun, and his, and still smelled like her — all at once. ⠀ Cigarette is twelve and a half years old. He's back to his old self. ⠀ I can still tell he misses Mom everyday, but he's decided to keep living. ⠀ He drags that curled-up scratcher around my apartment like it's his baby. He sleeps on it every night. ⠀ If you're taking care of a cat who's hurting, or honestly any cat who's stopped engaging with the world — get them something they really love to bring them back. ⠀ For Cigarette, it was Kitty Kurlz. ⠀ That's what brought him back to me. ⠀ And helped me fulfill the promise to my mother.