A friend and fellow pet collector I met in 2008 lost her fight to cancer earlier this year. Last night, I passed her score on warcraftpets.com, and it hit me that our friendly rivalry is over for good.


I'd gotten a few of the new pets, and hit them with stones. This afternoon, I'm wasting some time before work, so I thought I'd update my score on wcpets to see how I'm doing. I'd jumped up a few places on my server's ranks, so went to take a look to see where I am.I realized I'd passed my friend's score... and it's the last time I'll ever do so. Then I realized that other people will keep updating theirs, and eventually, push her off the first page of scores, where she'd been in the top 10-20 for so long. It broke my heart a little bit.She was a great lady, always upbeat and cheerful even when her health problems hit her hard. She helped me a lot with my pet collections -- which is most of what I do in WoW (hell, it's how I got my start, selling cross-faction pets). I hadn't seen her on in a month or so, but it still surprised me when a mutual friend let me know she had passed away.We weren't incredibly close, but I'd known her for nearly nine years; she was one of the first friends I ever made in WoW, and one of the few that had stuck around that long. Sometimes it just hits me that, of all the people I've ever met, all the friends I've ever known, she's the first one that I know for sure that I'll never see again.I remember her telling me that K'ute was her new favorite pet, how happy she was when she got it. I've given mine her nickname, so she'll always be around in a way.Thanks for being such an awesome friend. I'll miss you, and I'm sorry I never got to say goodbye.