It was so noisy, cold and smelly there. I sat high up, hoping that while the others were clamouring for attention, someone might see me first. My brothers were just showing off but those other two? Frantic.

The new people noticed the ones making a racket first and then my brothers. I sat as still as I could and kept them in my sights. One of them kept looking over at me. Egg lady said something and looked over. Oh no, what had she told them?! I had watched so many nearly perfect ones being lifted out and never coming back. I’d heard the words ‘father unknown’ when they introduced me, never ‘mother heartbroken’. I remember her. She fought to keep us, but they just pushed her away. Like she mattered as little as the ‘father unknown’.

The four people passed my stupid brothers between them and I bent my head. Clearly making a fuss and looking closer to normal was going to work yet again. Nobody wanted something that looked like me.

But then they were all staring at me. When the two smaller ones were holding me I didn’t want them to ever let go.

When they left without me I thought it was over. A week passed before I was put in a dizzying, noisy moving thing and finally lifted into the arms of the four I had thought I would never see again.

I knew that they liked me better than the others, that they preferred peace and quiet to a racket. So I tried my best. Most of the time. But when I kept trying to find mother, they got cross.

At the beginning I got two walks a day. Then the sticks and the sitting on a bench started, and there were less walks. She still looked at me as much as ever, but that was it. Every time I hear the heavier step of her outside shoes I stand up, ready for her to be the way she was before.

I think she misses that as much as me, so I try to sit close and put my head on the arm of the chair to show her I understand and I remember everything. No matter how exciting and long the walks with everyone else can be, I will always run back to her.

She is the mother I lost.