Little Em has been coughing a lot lately. I was thinking maybe he just has a hairball he can't get up. (Though he's never had a hairball before.) Or a cold or something. ('Cause you can hear a rumble in his chest sometimes when he breathes.)

But my mom keeps reminding me he's old. We've lived in New York for eleven years now, and we had him a year or two before we moved.

I refuse to believe that it's his old age making him cough, and what that could possibly mean.

I swear, I can't take any more of this. I'm not losing another thing I love. Not after Cotton and my grandfather.

I fucking swear, this year is going to destroy me. If I lose my cat, I don't know what I'll do. I can't lose everything I love in one fucking year. I can hardly breath just thinking about it.

I turn twenty-one in two months exactly. But if I lose one more thing I love, I don't know if I'll make it to that. At least, not mentally. I can't take anymore pain.

But you know what I'm going to do tomorrow? Take a million pictures of Little Em. I'm not going to have regrets like with Cotton. I never got to take pictures of him with my good camera. And I'm going to capture as much of Little Em as I can.

I want to believe I won't need to. But I'm hoping that if I prepare for the worst, it won't happen. If I don't prepare, it'll happen. I'm praying that logic works.

It has to. I know it will.