Kim Kardashian's Cat Died And It Taught Me The Meaning Of True Love

I used to hate Kim Kardashian. My reasons for this should be self-evident. I originally hated her because she's whiny and she was dating my favorite USC football player crush Reggie Bush. Then she did the sex on camera thing and that bothered me too, because I could do that if I wanted to, I just have better shit to do rather than exploit my beautiful human body.

Part of being against someone involves not actually giving a shit about their everyday actions. So when she started dating Kanye West I was like OH HELL NO, because I still usually greet the day by sitting straight up in bed and rapping Kanye lyrics to myself. Kim entering Kanye's life essentially meant she was entering my life, and at first that sucked unlimited dicks. When I first found out her kitten died I wasn't even mad, even if it was my beloved Kanye West who gave it to her. But then I listened to “White Dress” a bunch of times and it caused me to reconsider the entire situation.

As far as cat names go, Mercy is pretty dumb. It’s clearly a name-check to Kanye's own song, which is hilarious and infuriating in equal measure. But naming your kitten after your very famous boyfriend's very very famous song shows a little bit more brain power than I thought Kim possessed, and though neither the song nor the kitten embody or really deal with the true sentiment of the word "mercy," let's consider what it really deals with.

Mercy: compassionate or kindly forbearance shown toward an offender, an enemy, or other person in one's power; compassion, pity, or benevolence.

Isn't it time we show this relationship a little mercy? Sure, it'd be way easier to compare the death of the kitten to the media spectacle that KimYe's relationship has been, but what if it's for real? Celebrity relationships are too often dismissed just as fodder for lulz--a name like KimYe is packed with derision; we don't give dumb names to people we respect. Still, I've come around to believing that what Kanye and Kim have is real. This hypothesis is based on the approximately 2,000 times I have listened to "White Dress" as a balm for my raw heart that is bleeding due to the crash-and-burn of my own recently-attempted love affair.

As a couple, Kanye and Kim make zero sense--we're talking about a guy who's so obsessed with other people's approval that he made My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which while amazing ws basically a note to critics saying "HEY DO YOU LIKE ME PLEASE CHECK YES OR NO." So what the fuck is he doing with someone who's famous more or less for having sex on camera then doing a bunch of dumb shit on a reality show? Everything we understand about Kanye West suggests he should be trying to date whatever the girl equivalent of artisanal cheese is. But he's with Kim. And he wants us all to know it. “White Dress” is literally for her; he even tweeted about it so you know it’s real.

Have we ever heard Kanye like this? Have we ever heard him daydreaming of wedding details like a lovestruck teenage girl with a hope chest? We've heard him go over the curves and humps of strippers, girlfriends and superstars alike--but he never once drops a line about Kim's figure. Have we ever heard Ye admit that he was wrong and realize he needed someone so bad that he decided to not get high in the studio and record some sad track about his failure, but instead man up and travel across countries and continents to apologize? Could this be Kanye growing up right in front of our eyes? Could it be, of all the lame-joke reality TV star women our culture inundates us with, Kim Kardashian who's is eliciting maturity from Yeezy?

If the song is any indication, Kim is being a pretty badass girlfriend at this point. She might be the first person in ten years to not give into Kanye’s every whim--she stands up for herself when he tries to blow her off to do coke with models and seems to have made Kanye realize how meaningless that situation ultimately is. She knows about his reputation for lying and playing women so she called bullshit on him and took her beautiful ass to Italy to hang with her friends and forget about him. It's Kim who had the willpower to not call him back, force him to admit his feelings and come chase her down.

The auditory snuggle that is the, "Just me and you, girl" sample in "White Dress" suggests a couple-y aloneness even if Kim Kardashian's Instagram feed lets us all into their couple-y world. But the thing is, even when Kanye's trying to do his angry thizz face, he seems happy and so does Kim. For two notoriously shallow jerks, they have this glow.

So maybe the death of this adorable Persian kitten along with an extensive close reading of "White Dress" led me to believe it's time for us to take mercy on Kim Kardashian. It is well within our power to extend kindly forbearance to her--forget about her sex tape with Ray J, forget about her televised trainwreck marriage, forget about her sisterly cat-fights. If Ye is in love with her, and we're in love with Ye, and they're really in love, how can we we not open our hearts to her? The death of this adorable kitten as one of those stupid dumb things that happens in real life and in real relationships. Like Kanye's aunt hypothetically not being able to make the wedding in the song, this weird little sadness is just another link in the chain that seems to be drawing Ye and Kim into the inevitable grasp of foreverdom. I mean, if Kanye AND Kim, the erstwhile alpha and omega of awesome and stupid, can find true love--with each other!!--it makes it even more likely that us mere mortals can find it too.

Read more of Caitlin White's feelings on Twitter--@harmonicait