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🚨TRIGGER WARNING: animal death

I'm okay, so please please please click away/scroll past if this makes you uncomfortable and don't force yourself to read this post!! I'm doing well now and everything's good; please take care of yourself and don't think much of this ❤️❤️❤️  I appreciate you very much~

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I'm really sorry to bring something this dark to my blog, but I wanted to talk about something traumatic that happened two weeks ago. To help me move forward, to give an explanation to the friends who worried about me (I'm so sorry;;), and to try to honor the unjustly fallen a little bit if I can. There'll be no graphic descriptions however I will be describing sad events in detail—so if you simply want to know what happened, feel free to scroll down to the TL;DR in bold!

For context, two weeks ago was the bigger, longer, special occasion of BAR Con, which I help run sound at every month. (Highly recommend going if you're in Northern California and 21+ because of great music, anime, and my friends are cool!) This one had an unprecedented duration of 7 hours, and an insane but fun lineup of 4 bands, an idol duo, a eurobeat sensation, and a DJ. The punchline: the venue only gave us 2 hours to set up everything and sound check, so being there was very, very, very important...

But because I'm the worst (and had work to finish), I left the house about 10 minutes later than I should have. :c As I was coming down the patio, I saw the cutest tiny black kitten run across my driveway!!!  My neighborhood has a number of stray cats so it wasn't out of the ordinary—but I actually think it was my first time ever seeing a small kitten in person and I was smitten, of course. ///

After about 3 minutes of humiliating myself running back and forth across the driveway/garden while meowing and getting replies, I figured out that he was in my tire!! AAHHHH WHAT DO. I went over to my neighbor who'd just come home—and with whom I'd never interacted before—to ask if they had any cat food and he was suuuuper nice and came over to help me!! He looked under my car, checked inside the hood, tried to scare the kitty away, went above and beyond to help me. ;;;

At one point, there was a loud yelp and afterwards, we heard no more meowing for minutes. Total silence. My neighbor comforted me, "It's okay, you're okay! You should go! I'm positive he got scared and ran away." My gut feeling told me that I couldn't be so sure since neither of us saw the kitty running off. But.... Set-up and sound check for our biggest show ever had already started 10 minutes ago, we were understaffed, and I felt so bad... With no meowing, there was no evidence of the kitty's presence.
I had to ignore my gut feeling, because that's all that it was.

I backed my car out a couple of inches. Stopped. A few more inches. Stopped. Made it to the road, all seemed okay.

Two miles later, I was stopped at a stoplight. I'd actually taken a video from when I was kind of freaking out over the situation—so at this moment I watched it and wanted to tweet something like, "WAAAAH A CUTE KITTY WAS STUCK IN MY TIRE TODAY" but as the light turned green, I put down my phone.

It was a particularly busy intersection so it took a bit until my car actually got to start moving... and I suddenly thought I heard meowing. "I'm imagining it because I just heard meowing in that video," was my explanation to myself. My mind was in shambles, anyway. :/ I had been so scared and stressed that I missed a couple of turns my GPS told me to take.

...When I drove forward...I felt a bump... And I looked in my rear view mirror... And there was a familiar silhouette on the road.

Fuck. fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. I immediately picked up my phone and deleted the tweet draft. I drove in so much shock that I'm still surprised I made it to my destination. Parking was stressful too. I didn't know how to process what just happened and if I was worthy of feeling grief, you know? I wasn't the victim here and I felt so alone. It was an accident that I tried to prevent but failed to. I didn't know what I should say about it, if I should say anything.

I'm forever grateful to my friend Lee who both took off a ton of my pressure by volunteering with us just for this special event, and for letting me hug him and cry as soon as I got to the venue... ;;;____;;; ❤️

I reported it to our local dead animal pick-up because I didn't know what else I could do to take responsibility; it was near a jam-packed freeway entrance so there was nowhere I could've suddenly stopped to check on it. And.........I don't think it would've done me good to see that scene up close.

I cried through the sound check. I cried for a few days.
A week after, I went to a pet store and bought some cat treats: one bag to keep at home for emergency luring, another bag to feed to the stray cats that live in the parking lot of my workplace. Those cats may be the very reason I started liking cats a lot recently; whenever I saw them before/after work, they gave me a little spark of joy and I started instinctively gushing over them. ;u; The first time I fed them......just....seeing these kitties accepting and eating the food that I left for them with my own hands gave me this sense of closure and forgiveness.

Now I'm doing well and I hope that black kitten is doing well too, somewhere. ❤️❤️❤️ I thought about deleting the video, but I don't want to pretend that it never happened and I want to somehow pay him some respects by sharing what might be the only video that exists of his adorable smol self. Here's a video of a precious baby kitten and me not knowing what the heck to do ;o;


 


[ TL;DR: There was a kitten stuck in my tire, we thought it ran away, we were wrong... ]

That's the gist of it and the following is just me rambling so feel free to stop reading here! Long post is long.


This incident hit me extra hard because for the longest time, I've claimed that I have the personality of a cat (or recently, flerken)... I always make distressed cat sounds at Fome when I'm tired/frustrated..... he even endearly calls me a meowmeow as a literal pet name...... And for my entire life, I've tried to convince my parents that we should get a dog—fun fact: I've only ever had goldfish and a turtle that my grandpa let go outside while I was at kindergarten...—but in the past few months, I've started thinking that it could be nice to have a cat. ;v;

In my driveway, I had the thought.... "If only I weren't in a rush right now and my parents were home, maybe I'd try to convince my parents that we should keep and raise this kitten!!!! It'd be so cute... Try imagining it, Eva....! Me being best pals with this adorable small kitty and watching him grow up, it could be so nice!" ...I can't believe I did that to this poor kitten, I'm so fucking sorry. I'm so fucking sorry. He was frightened and a little dumb; but aren't we all? At first I thought that I should never associate myself with cats again, I don't deserve to ever say that I have the personality of a cat, I can't even say the word meow, I don't have the right to ever get close to any cat. But I decided I'm going to try to be kind to cats if I can. ;; I keep a lookout in the garden for perhaps that kitty's brothers or sisters—if possible I want to ask for their forgiveness and treat them with love.

I did better than I thought I would in the aftermath of trauma. That night after the show, I was terribly shaken while driving home... The next day, best friend Chiisana was sweet and drove me around so that I wouldn't have to. >< But the day after that, I was able to drive without feeling too anxious about it!
(Side story: At first I traded cars with my dad to help ease me back into driving....... and hit a flat on that same tire. Both incidents happened to the passenger front tire. BUT ON TWO DIFFERENT CARS. I was like, omg it's some kind of sign from the deities but what does it mean and why is my luck so bad?? And I had to leave in the middle of a concert to meet with a mechanic to change out the tire lmao what a wild weekend that was. orz)

But I cannot escape it. I can't escape my driveway, I can't escape my car, I can't escape driving. I think about it every day and I accept that as my punishment.

You know, years ago I saw a post circulating online about how you should knock on your hood before starting your engine because cats may crawl in there for warmth. It's not very cold where I live but I was like, "Oh god, that can happen? What if it happens to me? That would be my worst nightmare." And so on my more paranoid days, I did knock on the hood or I'd slam the door loudly and wait a few seconds before igniting the engine. I was honestly so upset because I felt like...I really tried to prevent an accident like this. I'm trying to forgive myself because it was a pure accident.

Yesterday was this month's normal BAR Con, not a special one. When my GPS told me the best route to take was the one that I drove that day (I've never taken that route before; it only happened because I missed some turns that day) I was....kind of shocked but I rolled with it. And I GENUINELY REALLY thought that I could get through it without much effect because I've been doing very well for the past week, didn't cry while making this, and had cathartic cat feeding sessions! But....after I got to that stoplight and saw what the road looked like...I just sobbed uncontrollably for the rest of the drive. ;;;; It's upsetting and I don't know why I just wanted to share that. I haven't told anyone yet because it doesn't feel appropriate to say. But I'm otherwise doing okay, I promise ❤️

I modded this from my new cover that I uploaded yesterday. I'd already decided two months ago that the art would be my persona holding my favorite Fruits Basket character Kyo-kun in kitty form—but now I dedicate this video to another kitty, one whom I love and miss very much.

Sayonara, mata au hi made. Arigatou, egao no mama de.

さよなら　また会う日まで. ありがとう　笑顔のままで.

Goodbye, until we meet again. Thank you, for always smiling.