MS 2026

I have some sad news from behind the teapot.

Sunny, my beloved orange cat of eighteen years, passed peacefully at home this week.

And if you’ve been reading the Kitchen Chronicles for any length of time, then you’ve already met a little piece of him.

Because Sunny was the foundational inspiration for Benny.

Not every part of Benny, obviously.

I would like the record to show that, to the best of my knowledge, Sunny never launched pancake batter onto the ceiling, attempted to save anyone from a bathtub, committed crimes involving Nutella, or required formal instruction in the Seven Holy Cat Things.

Benny has developed his own résumé.

But the heart of him?

The orange-cat ridiculousness?

The curiosity. The innocence. The ability to make something infinitely more complicated simply by being present. The strange little logic that makes perfect sense only if you happen to be a cat.

That began with Sunny.

Sunny was with me for eighteen years.

Which is such an enormous span of time that I don’t think my mind quite knows what to do with the absence yet.

Eighteen years of food bowls and litter boxes.

Eighteen years of fur.

Eighteen years of knowing there was another living creature somewhere in the house, even when I couldn’t see him.

Eighteen years of learning his sounds, his habits, his favorite places, his moods, and all the tiny rituals that become so ordinary you don’t realize they’re rituals until suddenly you aren’t doing them anymore.

He grew old with us.

And eventually, his body became very tired.

We were able to give him one final gift: he passed peacefully at home, surrounded by the people who loved him, in the place where he had spent his life being unquestionably, unapologetically Sunny.

It was gentle.

It was right.

And it hurt like hell.

⸻

I’ve thought a lot over the last few days about what this means for the Kitchen Chronicles.

Because Benny is still there.

He’s currently off learning Holy Cat Things with Jaguar. He’s been on his first road trip. He’s discovered trees, acquired a Buc-ee’s stuffed animal, and continued his lifelong campaign against Storm’s blood pressure.

And I don’t want that to stop.

Actually, I think I need it not to stop.

Benny was inspired by Sunny, but somewhere along the way Benny became Benny. He developed his own personality, his own relationships, his own place within the Court.

Sunny gave me the seed.

The stories made it grow.

So Benny isn’t going anywhere.

But I suspect writing him is going to feel different for a while.

There will probably be moments when I’ll write some ridiculous little orange-cat behavior and suddenly recognize where it came from.

Oh.

That was Sunny.

There may be things I didn’t even realize I’d borrowed.

A particular expression.

A stubborn little habit.

The peculiar dignity cats maintain while doing something objectively absurd.

The certainty that whatever has just happened was absolutely someone else’s fault.

Those pieces are scattered throughout Benny.

And I’m grateful for that now.

Because one of the strange and beautiful things about writing fiction is that we leave pieces of the real world inside imaginary ones.

People we’ve known.

Places we’ve loved.

Conversations we’ve overheard.

Animals who shared our homes.

They slip into characters without asking permission.

They become gestures and jokes and personalities and scenes.

And sometimes we don’t realize we’ve preserved something until we lose the original.

⸻

There is another Kitchen Chronicles story I’ve been planning.

In it, Storm gets sick.

Which is unusual, because Storm is usually the caretaker. He’s the one making the coffee, cooking breakfast, watching over Flame, keeping Benny alive despite Benny’s determined efforts to make this unnecessarily difficult, and generally holding the Court together through sheer stubborn devotion.

But this time, Storm can’t.

He has to lie down.

And everyone else takes care of him.

Flame.

Jaguar.

Benny.

The whole ridiculous little family.

I’ve realized since losing Sunny that the story means something different to me now.

It’s about what happens when someone we love becomes vulnerable.

It’s about the privilege of caring for them.

It’s about discovering that love isn’t only expressed through the years when someone is strong.

Sometimes love looks like staying close when they’re tired.

Sometimes it looks like making them comfortable.

Sometimes it looks like keeping watch.

And sometimes the last act of caretaking is allowing someone you desperately want to keep to finally rest.

I understand that story differently now.

⸻

I don’t know exactly what grief is going to do to my writing over the next few weeks.

I may write a lot.

I may write very little.

I may open a Kitchen Chronicles draft, see Benny being orange, laugh for thirty seconds, and then cry.

All of those things are probably allowed.

But I wanted the people who have come to love these characters to know about the very real little creature who helped create one of them.

His name was Sunny.

He was orange.

He was deeply loved.

He was ours for eighteen years.

And somewhere in the fictional halls of the Court, there will always be a small orange cat doing something he absolutely should not be doing.

I think Sunny would approve.

Rest well, little one.

And thank you for Benny. ❤️