Have you ever heard of the old adage that you die twice - once when you die, and another time when your name is said for the last time? It's naive to say that the digital realm will last forever. But, for the time that we are alive, hopefully it will be here, and our names can echo within it.

These are transparent images of my pets. Coda, Stewie, and Bender are my childhood pets who have already passed on; Dragon and Puff are still very much here, probably annoying the shit out of my parents as we speak.

While you're here, I want you to do me a favor. I want you to take one of the images of my pets and put them somewhere on your site. Doesn't have to be neocities, doesn't have to be front-and-center, you don't even have to link back here or provide credit (although I would really appreciate if you did). My hope is not only that they will live on, but that, in this way, they will continue to spread some of the joy that they gave me.

Coda was our sweet golden retriever. We got him when I was young, probably like 10-ish? He was such a good dog, but also had a lot of peculiarities. For one, he LOVED water. One day, my mom and I took him to a local park with a lake, where (crucially) dogs WERE NOT ALLOWED TO SWIM. The car window was open, and he was already tugging at the leash before we had even parked. Once the door was open, he RIPPED the leash out of my hand, jumped into the lake, and WOULD NOT LEAVE. My mom and I probably stood there for an hour, being told by every passing jogger that he wasn't allowed to be in there, and nothing we did - no treat bribes, no brandishing of his ball, no begging - would get him to leave. Another time, my dad and I were walking him in a park that had a river nearby. In order to get to the river, you had to cross a busy road. Of course, the INSTANT that he smelled water, Coda took off, running straight across the road. My dad and I started screaming from the sanctuary of the park. He literally paused halfway in the road, looked at us, titled his head, and continued running. We would take him to a doggy pool sometimes, but we had to stop when, halfway through checking out, he darted away, jumped over the gate into the pool, and started swimming around again.

Coda was also horribly afraid of the rain. During summer vacations, whenever my family and I were visiting the pool, if it started to look rainy outside, we'd have to RUSH back home -- otherwise, Coda would sneak into the laundry room and starting eating cat poop out of the litterbox. Nasty!

Coda also only ever wanted to play with other golden retrievers. If any other breed of dog approached him, he'd sit there silently and pretend not to notice them.

As he aged, he eventually developed arthritis. One night, in 8th grade, he snuck up to my room while my mom was asleep. I lived in the attic in my parents' house, two flights of stairs up. In order to get him back down the stairs, I resorted to getting little pieces of sliced turkey and putting them on each step. My mom was NOT happy about that one...

Coda passed away peacefully and lived to a good old age. If there's a doggy afterlife, I'm sure he's spent most of it swimming.

My mom got Bender and Stewie before I was born. The story she always told was that her sister used to work at a pet store, and one day stumbled across a box someone had left with a bunch of kittens. She was planning on using them as snake food before my mom decided to adopt them instead. My mom took one of them and her parents took another; when they reunited again later in life, they bonded so quickly she ended up taking them both home with her. They were both huge striped tabbies, so large one of the kids in her neighborhood apparently thought they were tigers.

Bender was my closest friend during some of the worst years of my life. He was an invaluable lifeline. I'm not sure what I would have done without him. He was a very calm, sweet old cat, used to being picked up and cuddled by kids. In his later years, I remember sitting with him behind the couch, next to a heating vent.

Bender passed away in 2018-ish, a few months before I ended up starting collge. If there's a kitty afterlife, I'm sure he's cuddled on a heating vent next to his brother.

Unfortunately, I don't currently have any pictures of Stewie. I have some stories about him though!

When he was a kitten, Stewie ran into the road and got hit by a car. Luckily, the only thing that broke was his tail; unluckily, he had to get it amputated, so in all the photos of him, he has a funny little tail stub.

Bender never really cared much for human food, but Stewie went crazy for it. He would hop into the middle of the table every meal like a giant centerpiece. Even though it's been years since he left us, the table still feels empty without him in the middle. Multiple times, we would find Coda had knocked over the trash can so Stewie could eat from it, or that Stewie had just jumped into the trash can to eat from it.

One time, in the middle of the night, I woke up to hear a song BLARING at full volume -- Bender and Stewie had chased each other around the house and knocked into a stereo, turning it on.

Stewie passed away a few years before Bender did. If there's a kitty afterlife, I hope he's getting all the table snacks he wants -- just not from the trash this time.

We got Dragon and Puff after I begged, basically. I was so miserable after Bender's death that I annoyed my parents into adopting new cats. We got them when they were still kittens, and renamed them -- the other pair of kittens in the shelter were also named Dragon and Puff, so we just stole those names. Here are pictures of them together! Dragon's the black cat, and Puff is the gray cat.

Dragon is very, very soft and very, very warm. She tolerates being picked up, unlike her brother, but still doesn't like it. She's also VERY vocal. She'll yell at me whenever I'm home. She'll go downstairs and yell at you until you watch her play with rocks; she'll yell at you until you feed her; she'll yell at you just for the hell of it sometimes. Her meow is really high-pitched and a little squeaky and it's SO cute.

Dragon's favorite person is my dad. There's no accounting for taste, I suppose.

Puff is a litte mean, but in an understandable way, honestly. He has a hard limit when it comes to petting him. Dragon will just run away if she's sick of you touching her, but Puff will swat and bite. He also HATES his back legs being touched. His favorite person is my mom. He sleeps in her bed each night. Once, I woke up in the middle of the night to my mom screaming in pain, and when I asked her what was wrong in the morning, she said that she had accidentally touched Puff's back legs in her sleep and he had started attacking her.

If he wants attention, Puff will start eating my mom's plants.

Puff likes jumping up on the table during meals to cuddle with my mom and ONLY my mom. He also really likes sitting on top of board games.

Puff doesn't meow a lot because his meow is really high-pitched and squeaky. He's started meowing more lately! He sounds really silly but very, very cute.