I recently subscribed to this helpful newsletter, Freedom With Writing, which sends you e-mails full of paid writing opportunities. It can be articles for journals, paid blog posts, short story contests, you name it. I get sometimes three e-mails a day full of writing goodies, and as we all know, writers like to get PAID.

Today I opened an e-mail that led me to the site for Chicken Soup for the Soul. I used to read those books like crazy when I was a kid, because they made me feel good inside, as they are intended to do. They were the perfect books to inspire and warmed you like a fireplace in winter. There was just something relatable about the stories, probably because they’re all strictly non-fiction.

So I checked out their guidelines, because I was notified they pay up to $200 per story. That’s a nice chunk of money, especially since the stories can’t be more than 1,200 words, which is less than I can write in a 2 hour period (only after consuming a hefty coffee).

And guess what I found. Yes, a category titled “STORIES ABOUT CATS“.

I, a human who adores cats more than other humans, was stunned with ecstasy.

The deadline for this CATegory (oh yes, I just went there) is January 1, so I have plenty of time to formulate the true, heartfelt, funny, and tragic story of my cat, Buttons.

To give you a little idea, Buttons was one of three brother kittens my family took home when I was four. He was black and white, shorthair, a tabby of all tabbies. But despite his docile name, Buttons was a ferocious wildebeest. He hated being held, cuddled, touched, scratched, or even looked at, and would dart outside whenever we cracked the front door. He’d spend his crazy days like a drugged boxer, beating up neighborhood cats out of their wits, so much that we’d hear the screams into the night and find Buttons at the back door whining with blood dripping down his face. He was like the feline Jack the Ripper.

But I loved Buttons. His two brothers, far sweeter and cuddlier than he, had both passed away, and this terror of a cat was all I had left. Buttons my not have known it but he was my hero. I would routinely dress up as a bride and usher him down our apartment hallway to recite my vows and slip on a grocery store toy-machine ring. I made Buttons my husband quite frequently and he never objected, only stared with his green, boiling eyes.

Long story short, my dear Buttons left this world at age 5. He was just a baby in retrospect but to me, it seemed like I’d had him for eternity. One day he wouldn’t come out from under our wardrobe, and his third eyelids rose across his eyes, and he wouldn’t show any sign of noticing my voice or my desperate, reaching hand.

We took him to the vet and he was diagnosed with feline AIDs. I know what you’re thinking–but it’s not sexually transmitted with cats. It’s transmitted through fighting and blood transfer. He’d shared so much blood wounds with other cats that he’d gotten the disease that was eating him up from the inside. His white-cell count was so low, the vet was amazed he hadn’t died in the night.

We decided then to let him sleep his suffering away. It was one of the hardest days of my life because I’d never seen an animal die before, let alone die with my own consent. I was only 11 and supremely devastated, and when the needle tucked into his arm I burst into horrid sobs that sounded throughout the office. I couldn’t control myself. I had never felt such sadness in my young life, and for me it was a huge wake-up call.

Buttons had also been injected with sterility drugs when he was a kitten so that he couldn’t reproduce, but somehow, as an adult, he’d gotten our female cat Gracie pregnant and had four miracle babies a few months after his death. I still have two of those miracle cats now, Patch and Bonnie, who have continued their father’s lineage for one more generation. They are, luckily, both very sweet and cuddly like their mother.

So that’s the basic story. Now to just spruce it up with some little anecdotes and a structure, and BAM. Maybe a story worth publishing for $200.

Thank you, Buttons, for being an inspiration to me even 15 years later.

R.I.P.