Ok, this was originally written for my english class, 12th grade, to practice writing a college application essay. (And if you steal it I will hunt you down and chop off your head.)
Enjoy.
Since the time her tiny body would fit in the curve of my own, and I could pick her up with one hand and set her on my shoulders, I have loved her. Eyes like hers I have often seen, but never did they glow with the same warmth. They're golden actually, framed by a dark colored face. Her hair is multi-colored, with black, a sort of tan color, orange, and maybe even some white. Rather plump, she is, as she waddles along on four feet. I suspect she really does need those whiskers and tail for balance, for she is a little over fed. Her name is Snickers, affectionately nicknamed Snickerdoodle, and she is my cat.
She has grown really too large for my arms now, although every now and again I stretch out on my bed to give her a good snuggle and scratch behind the ears, maybe even under the chin. Disastrously for our relationship is the fact that I am allergic to her fur. I remember though, even if she does not, when I cuddled her to me. I was the one that came home in the afternoon to make sure she and her brother were both properly fed. It was lying on my stomach with them that I used to do my homework. At first I just thought of them as cats, albeit cute ones. Snickers, however, taught me something entirely new and unexpected about what it means to be a person, and what it means to love.
Of course we all know that eventually house cats had to be neutered, and it wasn't a very big deal for her brother, Mittens. But for Snickers and I, well, neither of us were truly prepared for it. Snickers I would assume hadn't really any idea what was going to happen. I knew it would happen, and wasn't really sure what it would mean. Dad took her to the vet and I didn't pay much attention to it at the time.
When she got home I looked at her, and suddenly she looked incredibly real to me. She wasn't just a cat; she was my baby. As she curled up in the corner of my room closest to the heating system, I realized how very much a part of me she was. I loved her, when I understood that she was hurt, and afraid, the pain swept through my own body and made me cry just a little. The vet had shaved the fur from her belly, and sown her back up again with stitches that made her look like an ill-mended rag doll. It tore at me, even though I knew that she wouldn't really care about such things, that she would never have children. For a brief time she seemed to me entirely human and not at all animal. I curled up next to her, I petted along her back while she stared at me in a drugged kind of state, or closed her eyes and napped. I think she slept on my bed that night.
The raw emotion from that afternoon is always with me; it's embedded in my memory forever. From a cat I learned about unconditional love. From a cat, I learned to speak through my heart. From a cat, I learned to love.