Misty Carter

Their Story

Seventeen years. Three apartments, one house, two kittens she raised as her own, and roughly six thousand consecutive 6am headbutts — Misty saw the Carter family through all of it. She supervised every dinner from the fourth chair, a seat that was never offered and never questioned. She answered the can opener like a fire alarm well into her final winter. And when the kittens came in 2015 — loud, ridiculous, uninvited — she sighed once, washed both their faces, and that was that. A cat who lives seventeen years stops being a pet and becomes a witness to your whole life. She watched the kids grow up, the jobs change, the hard years and the good ones, always from the warmest lap in the room. The fourth chair sits empty now. No one has the heart to push it in.