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For seventeen years, a scruffy orange-and-white cat taught me what it means to be loved without conditions — long before I knew I'd need that lesson.
I met him in the summer of 2006. I was twenty-two, home for the season while my parents renovated our house, staying above my father's small clinic in a quiet town outside Hangzhou. Every morning I'd walk back from the market with breakfast, and every morning, a stray cat would be waiting by the door — cautious, unimpressed, clearly judging whether I was worth his time.
He decided I was. Slowly, then all at once.
He started showing up at mealtimes. Then at my window at night, uninvited, leaving paw prints on my books before falling asleep at the foot of my bed like he'd always belonged there. One morning, when I couldn't stop crying over a relationship I didn't know how to let go of, he climbed onto my pillow, pressed one small paw against my cheek, and just — stayed. That was the day I gave him a name: Nomi.
He came home with us not long after — smuggled in a canvas bag by my father, on a stormy night, against my mother's better judgment. And for the next seventeen years, he was there for everything: the boyfriend he never quite approved of, the wedding he attended with a little red bell around his neck, the newborn daughter he watched over like an uncle who'd rather not admit how much he cared.
Life got busier. My career, my marriage, my daughter — the years folded into each other, and the visits home grew shorter, further apart. I told myself I hadn't forgotten him. I had.
In 2023, Nomi passed away at home, in my arms, at seventeen years old.
I spent the next three years quietly grieving — and quietly realizing that Nomi had given me something rare: love with no conditions attached, in a life where I'd spent most of my time trying to earn everyone else's approval.
In 2026, at forty-two, I left the career I'd spent two decades building. Not because I had a plan — but because I finally understood what I wanted the next forty years to feel like.
HerKin was born from that understanding: a home textile brand for women who give everything to everyone else, and for the pets who love them without asking for anything in return.