A friend once told me that when a beloved cat dies, their tenth lives are our memories of them.
The truth is, their tenth lives are as ghosts, and they haunt the shit out of us.
We see them out of the corners of our eyes.
We feel them near when we are trying to sleep.
We hear them in the kitchen, or in the closet, or under the bed.
And it scares the shit out of us.
Maybe when we tend to our other cats, or the new kitten, do they get bored with us, and they move on.