On your last day, you got in bed with me. Well, to be fair, you came up to the edge of the bed and looked up, imploringly, and I dutifully scooped you up. You weighed almost nothing, and I could feel your delicate, fragile bones under your soft grey fur. The cancer had taken your fat first, then your muscle, and finally, inexplicably, everything else. On the check-up trips to the vet, they would weigh you as you got lighter and lighter. A couple trips ago I asked them to stop telling me your weight. I used to joke about a month ago about how you were slowly evolving into one of those Spirit Halloween plastic skeleton cats, and that you would eventually be just bones. I don’t make that joke anymore.

On your last day, you perched on the edge of the bed and purred your low, ever-present rumble. Both your doctor and I had agreed that you hadn’t seemed to be in any pain, that you were oblivious to your diagnosis, but I noticed the past couple of days that your rare meow seemed a bit plaintive, a bit worried. You were tired all the time, and when I took you outside the day before, you fell over several times. But today, this morning, I scooped you up from the bed, took you to your nesting spot on the dining table, where you insisted lately on sleeping and eating. It was dangerous: you’d gotten dizzy and fallen off the table a couple of times, but luckily you were so light at this point it didn’t hurt you, you just shook it off like you always did. I gave you extra food, the junk wet food you loved a lot.

On your last day, I looked at photos and videos of you. I still do. Somehow, they made the choice easier, seeing how big and strong you used to be, how you used to be this stocky Russian Blue, comparing that with your current body that got thinner and thinner no matter how much food you tried to eat. I thought back 13 years ago, getting you home that first day from my former coworker, you were always so curious, so trusting of people. You would have made a terrible guard cat.

You had a relationship with being outside that was complicated. I remember the first time my boyfriend at the time and I took you to Griffith Park in LA. We thought it was a good idea, sure! Bring our new cat to nature! Watch him frollick in the grass! Well, we weren’t mindful that you spent the first two years of your life in a bathroom, and you had severe agoraphobia. We took you out of the car and your eyes got big as saucers. It was too vast to comprehend. You were like Jodie Foster’s character in Contact when she’s teleported across the universe: “They should have sent a poet.” A bird flitted overhead and you literally lost your shit, turned into the Tasmanian Devil on a leash, a writhing ball of fur and claws and teeth. We bundled you up in a hurry and got you back home. A couple years ago, though, one day you marched right out of the apartment into the lobby, fearless and on the hunt for adventure. You’d clearly rethought your relationship with the world belong the apartment walls. After that I bought a harness and took you out as often as I could in the summer. We became a fixture in the neighborhood on sunny days when I didn’t have shoots, out in front of my building on a blanket, me with my wine spritzer and you chewing the grass until you threw up.

After I moved to Portland almost ten years ago, you were a dutiful prop for my staged photos, your deadpan catface the perfect foil to your dad’s antics. You loved the Portland spring and summer the most, glued to the window to track the birds’ and squirrels’ every movement. I sometimes just sat next to you and watched your face as you did, seeing the excitement in your eyes. I loved you so, so much. I think you knew that.

At one point we had a scare, you and I, a few years back in 2017. I noticed an elongated fang, took you in, and they had to remove a third of your teeth! We were so lucky we got through that, and I’m still convinced that that added years to your life.

You were such a faithful companion, you were by my side through my hardest breakups and rejections, through my biggest joys, and you held on long enough to help me start grieving my dad when he passed a month ago. I won’t pretend you understood English, I’ll never claim you knew the nuances of what I was going through, but you didn’t have to. You saw me in distress or happiness and came to me. You were so curious whenever I was on Zoom or FaceTime, and would make your presence known onscreen, charming people all over the country and the world. More likely you were just concerned about why daddy was talking to that little metal and glass rectangle like a crazy person.

On your last day, it was sunny and beautiful. I got the blanket we loved, got your water bowl, and we went out into the grassy backyard. The sun dipped low in the late afternoon sky and shone on your handsome, grizzled face. You lapped the water, you stalked some insects, you purred next to me. After about 45 minutes, I got the text. I scooped you up, brought you inside, where the doctor and the vet technician were waiting. I put you in my lap, where you started purring. I whispered and reminded you that were the bravest, the best, the sweetest little grey man I’ve ever known. I whispered how thankful I was that we found each other, that we saved each other. I gave you head scritches, pet you softly, until you stopped purring, until you were gone. I whispered that I hope you haunt me. I whispered other things too, just for us.

It is the fall of 2007, in Los Angeles. A momma cat has given birth to a litter of kittens, she licks them clean, tending to each one carefully and thoroughly. One of them, a grey one, writhes with life, wriggles against his littermates, meows a tiny, raspy meow for the first time, opens his eyes. Oh, the things he will see, the insects he will chase in his life ahead of him! Oh, the sunny spots he will sunbathe in! Oh, the love he will know.