Ok, this ridiculously NERF-like box monster was our gal, Peaches. 

The Peach. Peach Pie. Peaches the Hutt. Jabba the Peach. Chubbs. Mizz Peaches.

She was a very *very* fecund stray sprinkling kittens all over our home street like cheap glitter at a Kesha concert. She decided she liked us best (read: chumps), moved her litter across the street during a May thunderstorm (while our mother shouted “Noooooooo!” in despair that would’ve rivaled Anakin Skywalker when he realized he’d killed Padme.

We stopped her reign of terror. We took her to the vet to have her Kitten Portal stoppered by powerful wizards (who chuckled at her sweet sociableness, one tech saying “She’s treated this whole experience like a spa trip!”) Before she went in for surgery, she unleashed a cloud of fur so thick and choking, I began coughing. If she had been a stink bug, I would be dead now.

Peaches was Best Gorl. She was smart (she brought a baby she couldn’t feed directly to our Mother for help and Mom instantly knew what was wrong), fraternal (except if you were Moo, our bossy tuxedo), an excellent mother, a great friend, and a terrible bed partner (she would stand over you in the dark purring instead of settling down).

Even in her final illness, when I came to retrieve her in her box, I had three staffers at the emergency vet sympathetically ask me who I was there for, and when I said “Peaches”, they each said “Oh no! Not Peaches! I loved her!” One tech even said “We were all coming by her kennel a lot to cuddle with her, what a sweet girl.”

Peaches, the menace of the neighborhood 🍑: a love story