History of Smokie; the beginning of Alaina

I also had a nightmare the other day about the whole smokie ordeal again except this time it was Alaina. Before Alaina, it was Streak and before him it was Tazz. I have had to deal with these nightmares for the past eight years. What happened to Smokie was terrible and he/she is possibly the only cat death that I have never gotten over. And it's because of Smokie that whenever a cat dies and I'm not around, my parents don't tell me about it, or they continuously lie about seeing them "around" to make me think that they just ran away.
I don't remember what cat I had before I got Smokie. I just remember being really connected to her. (All my cats were girls, Aprils were boys) and whenever a cat of mine died (back then) Chris Sr. would make up for it by getting me a new cat. (Quite commonly a kitten from my aunt’s farm...yes the one that is currently a home to 90% of my cats right now)
Anyways, Smokie was the rebound of one of my past cats deaths. And I was instantly in love with her. Love at first sight, if you will. I was called outside and JR. had her in his hands and said "You should name her Smokie because of her fur." So, alas, I was so excited that that was what her name became. Since it was so late at night (the sun had set) we put her on the back patio and went inside. Early the next morning, Sr. told me that we weren’t allowed to tell Mom about Smokie. So I successfully hid her for about a week or two. Until Mom came home from work and felt Smokie rub against her leg one night.
Well that was when she stopped being a secret. This was right around the time when Chris Sr. and I went and bought Brudis; the Irish wolfhound/black lab mix. Quite a stupid dog really. He hated being in his kennel with Hailey our husky/black lab mix. So he slept on the back patio with Smokie. Late one night, Chris Sr. got me and we snuck up to the back window and saw Smokie and Brudis cuddled up together on the porch swing. It was too cute.
My love for Smokie grew like a wildfire in a dry field. We were best friends. She came whenever I called her name and always stuck by my side. I made her necklaces by braiding dandelion stems together and even snuck things out of the house so she could be comfortable when she slept. (It was a director’s chair that said "Larkin" on the back. It was soon covered in her hair. I wish now that I had kept the seat of it).
When I look back now I'm amazed that I have so many memories of Smokie. She wasn't around for a long time; a few months maybe. I just remember it was cold when I got her (but no snow on the ground) and that she was killed in April, still a kitten. Now, there were always three things I blamed for the untimely death of Smokie.
1.) Hailey: after all she was the dog who killed her
2.) Chris Sr.: after all he was the guy who shot her
3.) Me: after all I was the one who released the dogs into the yard.
Through that summer, and Elementry School, I blamed myself and Hailey hardcore. I went through long periods of serious denial and said that Smokie would have made it. After all it was just a scratch, right? I always said that. Every single time it was brought up I would say "It was just a scratch; she would have been just fine." Even though I knew that everyone else was right because since I was only ten my opinion didn't matter, I was smart enough to recognize that. The sweater I had tied around my waist the day I held my bleeding smokie now belongs to Logan, since it doesn't fit anyone else. And whenever he wears it I think of the blood that had gotten on it.
That's when it all comes back to me. I can remember it perfectly like it had happened yesterday. I won't get into any details right now though. I have written about it so many times to try and get over it. It's another chapter to the story all together. I'd probably be okay with it now if we had gone to a Vet and THEY said that Smokie wouldn't make it, but to have Sr. say that she was dying didn't persuade me much. I was told to go in the basement and play N64 with Cody while Sr. put smokie "out of her misery". Sr. wouldn't even tell me where he buried smokie, if he did at all. I had caught him a few years later simply throwing the body of a dead cat away after it had been hit by a car, and then my mom doing the same thing to another. They only person I had ever witnessed burying a cat body was JR. when he buried my kitten Tubby the first. Sr. only buried Patches for me, the first cat to die by Hailey.
I believe in silly things like reincarnation ever since Smokie left in hopes that she would return to me in the form of another and in several different scenarios I thought that she did return to me. Casper had been attacked by a dog and lived, in Egypt mythology; a reincarnated cat can't die the same way twice. Casper, although a little shaken, survived the dog attack, making me believe that she was the reincarnation of Smokie, but then why wasn't she as attached to me as Smokie was? I decided it wasn't her and continued waiting. (And that was when we lived on Wheeler not too long ago.) I only have those nightmares I told you about when I get super attached to a cat. Hence why Alaina was the star of a recent one. I just couldn't believe how real her scream sounded. I don't know where I got that sound from. I hadn't heard a cat scream like that since, well, I just never want to hear it again.