Cat Dog Transparent Hair Storage Box

About where this came from: 

        I still remember the first time I saw you. It was a rainy day ten years ago, and you were cowering in a cardboard box, soaking wet, like a ball of crumpled brown wool. When I picked you up, you stuck out your little pink tongue and licked my finger. At that moment, I knew we were destined to be together for the rest of our lives.

        Ten years, over three thousand days and nights. You were always lying on the carpet in the study, quietly accompanying me when I was writing. The sunlight poured over you through the curtains, gilding your fur with a golden edge. Sometimes when I stopped tapping my fingers on the keyboard and turned my head to look at you, you would immediately prick up your ears and look at me with those wet eyes, your tail flicking on the floor.

        The day you left, the weather was surprisingly nice. The sun was as warm as it had been ten years ago, only this time, it could no longer transfer its warmth to your fading cold body. I stroked your fur, which had lost its luster, and suddenly remembered all those hairs that I had collected over the years - on the comb, in the crevices of the sofa, and on the cushion where you loved to lie down. I never imagined that these hairs, which once gave me a headache and needed to be cleaned every day, would now be the most precious of mementos.

        I began to carefully collect every strand of hair you left behind. My fingers trembled slightly as I removed the tangled brown filaments from the comb. They were so light and soft, as if they still carried your warmth. I put them into that specially prepared wooden box, the last gift you left me.

        When it was quiet at night, I often opened that wooden box. I don't need to touch them, just looking at those hairs, I can remember the touch of your hand when you rubbed against mine, and the way your hairs flew in the wind when you ran. Sometimes I would take out a small strand and put it in my palm, and it would outline all of you - the happy, the pouty, the quiet, the angry. Each of you, alive in these tiny hairs.

         Ten years was too short, so short that I wasn't ready to say goodbye; and ten years was too long, long enough for each hair to be engraved into my life. Now, this wooden box sits on my desk. When I write, I look up and see it. I know that you are still with me in your own way, just as you were on that rainy day ten years ago when you first licked my fingers.