mizu shrine

me googling how to take care of a kitten

since we found him as a baby in october, hes technically an october black cat :3 very special

perfectly sized for the palm of your hand

i remember the day that i met mizu vividly. a core memory. it was evening in october of 2010. i was taking a nap and suddenly my mom wakes me up and goes "hey look what i found" and she then proceeds to show me this black kitten that fits entirely on the palm of her hand. he was so tiny. my mom had just found mizu in our backyard, all alone and meowing. so! my mom decided we should keep him. but we've never had a kitten before! so 10 year old me was tasked with something very important. to research how the hell do you take care of a kitten on the world's slowest pc that had windows xp installed. i remember googling things like "what milk do kittens drink?", or "how do kittens pee?" it was wild. we did not know a single thing. but we knew that we had to keep him so he wouldnt be alone and lost outside. while i was googling stuff i kept him on my barbie house to make sure he didnt go anywhere while i was doing my research. and i find that so cute. he was such a cute little kitten. the next day we got some kitten formula, alongside a very small milk bottle so we could feed him. he was so so cute when we fed him. he was truly just a lil boy!!!! he would sleep on a cardboard box with a blanket right next to my bed. i would play with him so much. he was so playful.

people (understandably so) seem to think that i named mizu based off the japanese word for water: mizu, but that is not the case!!! you know how when there's a cat nearby ppl just tend to go "pspspsps"? well here in puerto rico we do that but sometimes instead of going "pspspsps" we go "mich mich mich" or "michu michu" to get their atention. so idk i guess 10 year old me really liked that and went ahead and called him "mizu" for the rest of my life.

after getting mizu in out house, i remember a few days later we actually saw the mom cat with her kittens around our backyard. they seemed pretty chill though it was clear the mom cat had no interest in getting mizu back. we had another cat called carmela. she was such a sweet heart. she would visit me while i was at my grandma's and i would feed her these sausages called "carmela" and that's where her name comes from. she seemed to always be around my grandma's so i took her home with me like a few months before finding mizu. all she did was sleep and eat and you know what? slay. but anyway. this is about mizu not carmela. carmela was surprisingly very chill with the new kitten in the house. they would play together sometimes. and i wanna think that carmela helped mizu a lot on "how to cat" since mizu never got to spend a lot of time with his mom. so the things that carmela would do like scratch the nearest tree, lick herself, mizu would go ahead and copy her. i think its very sweet. thanks carmela.

mizu grew up. and very quickly! he mostly spent the time outside, climbing trees, exploring our backyard, chasing lizards and birds... he loved it. i grew up in a very rural place (i was literally surrounded by mountains and trees) so im glad he was able to spend a lot of time outside because of that! and at night he would come home to rest with me. he always kept me company. and he was so warm too. when it was cold i loved putting my hands under his tummy so he would warm them.

mizu has been there through my worst times, and my best times. i've spent 11 years of my life with this cat. and man, do i love him so much. i had to say goodbye to him in 2021 when i moved out sadly. i knew he would be better staying there so instead of putting him through another insufferable airplane ride, i let him stay with my mom. it was a bit hard when i decided to move away. because i knew i couldnt take him with me. but despite the sadness that i feel from missing his meows, his playful aura, at least i have 11 years of memories with him. and no one can take that away from me. as of writing this, this year he will be 13 years old!!!! hes such a big boy!! i hope to visit him sometime in the future. and if anything happens, i am so so so happy i got to watch him grow right beside me and spend my time with such a wonderful cat. my meow meow. love you forever mizu. written on 21.may.23