Goodbye, dear friend

11:15am
I remember the day we met so clearly. I was 21 years old, just moved into a house from an apartment, and I was feeling so independent that I wanted a friend to take care of. I told my boyfriend I was going to get you and I grabbed my friend Fiona and away we went.

I knew you were the one the moment I saw you. When we set out I thought I wanted someone younger, someone impressionable who could grow up with me. And there were a few. There was a tangled mat of soft faces and bodies in one spot, but they weren't what I'd envisioned. When I saw you, you were all alone, and you were little, but you had a look in your eye like you'd seen stuff. You'd been through stuff and you knew stuff. I went over to you and made a sound, something you might make at a sweet baby you see, and I put my fingers through the bars, wiggling them to make you come. You walked right up, cheeked my fingers, then promptly flopped over on your back and edged right up next to the bars. My fingers drowned in your soft grey belly fur and my heart melted immediately. "Fiona, this is the one!" I gasped, and she came over to see, and she also fell in love that instant.

My boyfriend had insisted that if I wanted a cat, it had to be male, and it had to be a kitten. But this half-grown feline female was mine. His comment when we returned with our grey fluffy bundle: "You got a used cat?!?!" And he tried not to like you. But that didn't last long. Deadheads as we were, we looked for a good name: Bertha? Sunshine Daydream? Sugaree? No. Althea. It was Althea.

They told me you were rescued, somewhere between 12 and 18 months old (your petite stature made it difficult to tell your age accurately). They said you were pregnant when you arrived, and your adorable kittens had been snapped up one by one, leaving you alone and bereft of your children. I still imagine what those kittens must have looked like, what sweet and affectionate personalities they must have even now. If they are anything like their mother, they are the best in the world.

You quickly proved yourself to be the best-natured companion anyone could ask for. You were a cuddler. You were playful and funny. You were beautiful and regal. We tried to make you into something you weren't: a protector against miscellaneous vermin, but you met your match in dust motes caught on sunbeams, which interrupted your sleep with sneezes. You toyed with rodent interlopers when they crossed your path, but they literally had to walk across your paws before you gave them much notice. At those times, we could almost see the ancestral knowledge of hunting churning in your furry brain, struggling--and failing--to emerge past that of kitty krunchies and catnip toys. We were exasperated with your complete inability to perform this basic feline function, but it didn't last long when you dug your pin-claws into our denim-clad legs and blinked your composed green eyes at us.

You never needed much territory. Your favourite spot was the warm pavement in front of the house, where passers-by would become enchanted by your friendly nature and your unsubtle demands for attention (flopping over under an extended hand was always a helpful hint). "Oooh what a darling kitty!" they would coo. And we would smile indulgently from the stoop. Even when we moved to the country, you stalked through the bushes surrounding the driveway, getting all manner of grass and burrs stuck in your long fur, but never roamed further than that. You always preferred the comforts of home and the company of your human family, those loving hands that fed you treats, pulled the summer dreadlocks out of your fur, and petted, petted, petted you. Endless petting will be your heaven, I have no doubt.

When I had to give you over to the care of my mother a few years ago, after failing to find a rental home that would allow you to stay with us, I was sad and lonely without you for a while. But I knew that as you got older, you needed the stable company of your peers, perhaps weary--and wary--of the child you had learned to tolerate. And our close relationship with mom/grandma meant that we saw you very often anyway. I'd like to think that there's a certain inflection in my voice when I say your name so that you always remember me. The smell of my hands and the feel of my fingernails underneath your chin, the way you fit in my arms, cradled like a baby. I'm not your mother any more, but I think you still know me.

When you started to get sick, we did everything possible to make you comfortable and, yes, to extend your life. Maybe selfish of us, since we knew we would be so lonely without our best kitty. And now you still purr when we pet you, you still push your nose into our palms, you still look toward us expectantly (and with some indignation) when we stop petting you for 3 seconds together. But you can no longer lift yourself into a sitting position. You can no longer get yourself out of your litter box. We think you can no longer really see us. As our mother has said, you have begun to look away into the distance, that life beyond this couch, this pavement, these hands. We suppose you are ready, and all that remains is for us to let you go.

2:00pm
As the day wears on I find myself dreading the end of it. The end of this work day will be when I have to say my final goodbye. I wonder if it's corny of me to feel like the end of her life is closing a chapter of my own. Am I truly an adult now, now that my friends are starting to die? Or maybe I'm so sad and weary because she is sad and weary. I am empathetic to her after our long friendship?

Or it's not so significant and profound as that. It's simply that I don't want to say goodbye to my friend. It's that I don't know what death brings and I fear it. I don't want her to go there, and I don't want to have to follow her, eventually. It's that I will miss her.

5:30pm
I've never seen anyone die before. I've never seen a dead person and I've never watched someone cease to live. I was nervous about going into that experience, worried that I might fall apart just from being present during such a profound transition. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to cope with watching my beloved friend stop existing as I've always known you.

When I was driving to my mom's house I was hoping you would already be gone, so I wouldn't have to watch you go. Failing that, I was hoping you would be so very limp and weary, utterly unable to respond or to hold up your head, so unaware of your surroundings, that my heart would want only for your soul to be free of your weakened, diminished body. But you seemed a little bit alert. You seemed interested to be leaving the house, to be going in the car, to feel the cold air creeping in around the pashmina you were wrapped in to keep the chill away. Your ears were pricked up and your tail was twitching. And I felt so sad, I felt like it was wrong, what we were about to do.

My mom told me that this morning she found you in your favourite place, your spot in front of the fire, your paws caked in a hardened blend of flushable litter, turned to concrete with a small amount of urine. Apparently, while my mom slept a few hours, you had made it to your box and from there could not return without a rest so long, your paws got encased and you lacked the strength to shake or scrape it off. Mom said, it was time for you to go.

You weighed 2.1 kilos. Your legs were shaky as you stood on the scale. When the doctor came in to administer the shot, you lay there as still and docile as anything. When the needle went in you gave a big twitch, as the doctor had told us you would, but then you were gone and your skin beneath my hand began to cool immediately. The doctor said you were so weak, you were gone by the time he was halfway done. I didn't see your eyes as you went. Part of me wanted to see you go, but a bigger part couldn't bear to. I did look at your beloved face afterward, I kissed your soft cheek. I stroked your eyes closed. If I'd been alone, I would have sat down and cried. But I wasn't, and we walked out of the office in a daze, went to the store and bought groceries for dinner. We are sadder and lighter, a little emptier, as our life goes on without our Althea.