I did not have to go to school today, not physically. I had to be there in an oddly virtual way – I took two online tests and uploaded a paper, and those turned out fine.

School exists in an invisable layer of reality – floating through the aether from one blue screen to another to another and the next. Friendships, work, school, news about unfairness on the other side the world. It all exists on a screen that is currently about six inches from my face. When I look up, my eyes are so tired that I can’t make out the details in the trees without my glasses.

I miss everything, but maybe everything has been right there the entire time. All I have to do is look up.

When I’m feeling sad and I’m crashing in the living room of my parents’ house, two other warm bodies have a tendency to gravitate towards me. The cat will curl up on my chest if I’m laying down, or in my lap if I’ve got my feet up. The dog will stretch out on the floor beside the couch. I suspect that the cat is only in it for the body heat, but I think the dog is there because of whatever it is that connects dogs to people. I don’t know if it’s love or some ancient and deeply altruistic agreement that’s gradually morphed into an instinct. Might be the same thing.

So I curl up under blankets and the bodyweight of cats, and breathe in the smell of lab mixed with a handful of other things. We think maybe some coonhound, american bulldog, possibly great dane, but we don’t know.

She sticks her nose in my face when she needs something, and sometimes even when she doesn’t. Just because. When my dad comes home, she’ll meet him at the door. They both enjoy this.

The cats come and go. They thrum and stretch, they knead and purr, they ask for attention one minute and then leave deep red scratches down my arms and back the next. In anxious moments, when I’m trying to sleep and can’t, a 20lb weighted blanket and several layers of sheets and knitted blankets are not heavy enough. A 20lb weighted blanket, a sheet, a knitted blanket and the bodyweight of a cat is heavy enough.

This random mix of nonhuman companions makes me feel less alone in a way that pretty much none of the humans have successfully achieved. I love them for that. Or at least, I experience one half of some kind of ancient and deeply altruistic agreement that has gradually morphed into an instinct.

It might be the same thing.