Different.

Tears of grief are different than tears of frustration or anger. I'm not sure why, but just a little while ago I ran across the notes I made about my sweetie boy Pierre when he died. It all came back to me, and it hurt. So when I cried about it I noticed it's different than, say, when Mrs. Buddy and I have an argument that results in frustrated tears, or when I jam my gouty toeknuckle on the bottom of the pool because I was concentrating on not getting my jinglies whacked by the feet first dive into the pool during my daily clothing-prohibited swim, which is itself enough to make a hard man cry.

I hadn't thought too much about Pierre since he died, hadn't thought too much about how I felt everything happen to him, how I tried and failed to kill him, and how it nearly drove me insane watching him weaken and then seemingly strengthen to the point he could see us. I put out of my mind when I took him outside in one of those lucid moments thinking he might like to smell the outside once more before he died, only to feel horrible because he tried to get up to chase a scent as he always did but promptly fell over on his side from weakness.

He was only a cat, I know that. But, we have no children yet, we want them. To us, he was one of ours.