i lost my baby recently.
except she wasn’t my baby, not in the traditional sense. she wasn’t a person. she didn’t grow in my stomach, wasn’t placed on my chest after an excruciating labor. i didn’t wait for the sound of her piercing cry, or for the nurse to verify that she had ten tiny fingers and ten tiny toes.
my girl, you see, was a cat. my girl had way more than ten tiny fingers and ten tiny toes. she was a polydactyl, the product of a rare genetic occurrence that gave her the appearance of thumbs, as well as a handful of teeny tiny extra toe pads.
my girl wasn’t a human baby, but losing her has made me think a lot about human babies. about motherhood, and what, exactly, makes a mother.
i was never the type to dream of a wedding, or a white picket fence, or 2.5 children.
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