Here I lie, a cat wondering if my family will return. The animal shelter bustles with humans looking for companionship... for fun... for someone to distract their children. I too receive an occasional glance, and a few looks of passing interest. The attention is brief, broken off at the least when they look at the information sheet showing my age.

A fifteen year old cat? So sad, they say. Even at a lowered adoption fee, the humans move on to someone more 'adoptable'.

What had happened to my family? Had they needed to move? Was I becoming sick, and they couldn't deal with the bills when they had to pay for other things?

Had I done wrong, something worse than claw up the family couch? Or was that the reason of my abandonment? Whatever the reason, I had been a member of their family, a member all too easily… excused from family life.

I turn my rear to the humans. It is too much. The shock of it all is overwhelming. Abandoned and alone, alone among so many. Each one of them is a stranger, where just a bit ago, I had meaning as a part of a warm family.

Perhaps I should be glad they didn't dump me on some quiet nighttime street, dry and hard under my paws. Or I could have ended up as a free pet, taken on some lie to be used to bait-train some killer of a fight-ring. I can't feel anything but emptiness in the shelter, where all my faults are considered, but no one knows my gifts.

No one here knows how much I love my girl. Not one knows how the father would say such gruff things about pets, but sneak me chicken in night-time kitchen raids if I sit to flick my tail just right and angle my eyes to catch the refrigerator light's gleam. The mom tells all visitors to my house how I am so careful with her daughter, such a tender cat.

How could I be that wonderful cat, removed from all that had been familiar, all that had been mine? Who in the shelter might know me for who I am? No one. I am alone.

I am so alone, I feel scared. Scared, as I had been for an instant when I missed the jump to the counter a week ago. My girl had been upset when I took a tumble. It had hurt, but the pain that day had faded. I had my family there, ready to support my healing. Here, there are only strangers with curious eyes growing not-so-curious as they leave me.

So, with my rear to them, I tell them all I don't care to meet any of them. I just want my family back. I want back in my house. I need the familiar around me. Fear and pain are what I have now.

Someone taps on the plastic of the viewing enclosure. I don't bother; whoever it is, is not family. Someone of my family would take me back, know the value of 'me'. Any others would see me as I am outside my familiar confidence: tired, old, and sad.

The human isn't interested in a cat who doesn't care, and I'm not interested in someone not my family. I love bumping my head to my family, but I'm shy with anyone else. The shelter staff members are nice enough; they pet me. But the staff have many others in their care, and to them, I am nothing special.

I'm not angry. I'm not regretful, for I lived as the best cat I could for my family. I'm just… lonely. No one will come for me. Perhaps in time, I will try to attach to someone new, but it could never be the same as the bonds I built with years of care with my family.

I miss you. Come back.