I want you to interrupt me. Climb on my lap between my hands and my computer screen. Make it impossible for me to write. Make it impossible for me to do anything but stroke your fur. I want you to insist on this because what I’m writing was drivel anyway, and even if it wasn’t, it’s not as important as you on my lap. I want—more than anything in this moment—for you to do that, and you can’t. Because you are gone. You are not here to interrupt this writing session, and so I must write it. I don’t want to write it.
On April 1, at approximately 11:00 am, Sharky left us. He’d been declining rapidly for a few months and had been in questionable health for almost two years prior. We’d taken him to the vet. Two rounds of blood work, urine tests, stool samples, and physicals resulted in nothing but more questions. Everything looked fine on paper, but he was wasting away. The best hypothesis the doctor had was that he had a tumor somewhere on his GI tract, causing the weight loss, starving his body of nutrients despite his healthy appetite. Because he had been eating, drinking, and in generally good spirits, the doctor suggested a wait-and-see approach in the hopes that he might bounce back a little before doing further scans or invasive tests. We really thought he might recover. We did everything that we could do, we think, but Sharky is gone.
I want to share his death story and I know it can be very upsetting (now I know) for those that have experienced pet loss. If that’s you, just skip this next paragraph.
This morning we woke up and found Sharky barely breathing on his cat bed. The scene was more unsavory, in truth, but I’ll leave it at that. We thought he was gone, but a faint rise of his chest sent a moment of hope our way. It didn’t stay long. He was clinging to life, barely. I picked him up in my arms and rocked him, crying and shaking. In utter despair. Then I caught myself in the mirror and realized my mistake. This was not about me. Sharky needed me, and I was a mess. I didn’t want his last moments to be tainted by my fear. I took a deep breath and composed myself. I calmed, somehow, and whispered in his ear that I loved him so much, more than I could have ever imagined loving a cat. And that it was okay. If he needed to go, it was okay. We loved him. He straightened suddenly with as much tension as his weak body would allow, and I knew his heart was giving out. Still, somehow, he breathed. Safe in my arms, he held on, but we couldn’t bear to see him suffer. Brad decided to take him to the emergency vet for either a miracle or a goodbye. I kissed him again. I said in his ear “Your magic will keep living.” I don’t know why I said that. It sounds like something Zelda would say when she’s searching for the right words to a complex thought, and it comes out all wrong but also makes sense. I meant that. The magic that was Sharky, which I’ll get into next, that will become something new. I believe that.
Brad never made it to the vet. Sharky passed in the car listening to calm music with his person by his side. He brought Sharky home, and we buried him under a lilac tree outside our patio window where we’ll see him every morning and at every sunset. The tree has purple blossoms. Brad used to think Sharky looked purple sometimes. His fur was a dusty gray with a hint of something else. Sometimes beige. Sometimes a soft lavender. He was our sweet kitty boy, and now he will be a lilac tree.
In my writing, I’m trying to work on not telling you how I feel but to let the scene speak for itself. I’m having trouble restraining myself right now because what I felt—what I’m feeling—feels like it matters the most. I am devastated, and I want to hold my cat.
It seems that when we lose someone we love, we are left with three things: memories, regret, and guilt. The memories are the balm. Times of joy, comfort, laughter, and love. I just want to share pictures and talk about how Sharky was absolutely the most wondrous cat to walk the earth. But the memories also remind us of what we’ll never again experience. That regret is inevitable. We never have enough time with the ones we love. Never. I regret that I will never hold him again. Never look into his blue eyes and feel him looking back. Never hold him under his arms and legs and stretch his long body the way he liked. Never feel him resting against my chest, calming me, bringing my blood pressure down. Never hear his purr. Never talk to him. Sharky talked a lot, but now, never again, and it aches. It burns. I also regret my attitude toward him when Zelda was born. And that’s where guilt comes in. I am riddled with guilt for having resented my cats when I had a newborn, and yet, I did my best. The relentless needs of a newborn baby do not mix well with the needs of an aging cat. As a new, exhausted, overwrought mother, I had no resources left for Sharky, and I think he knew that, and it broke me. That’s really a topic for another day, but I’ll just say that about a year ago I felt my resources as a mother free up a bit as Zelda got more independent and I wanted to give all that lost time back to my cats and especially Sharky who was always so eager for our companionship, but that was really when he started to get sick. And so the needs grew again alongside Zelda’s needs as a raging toddler. And the needs of our jobs, and our families, and a global pandemic, and everything that never stops turning. But caring for the sick and dying—it requires that we stop, or at least slow down, doesn’t it?
I keep wondering, fretting, did he know how much we loved him? How singularly special he was to us? To everyone who ever met him? But of course, no. He didn’t. He was a cat. I hope we gave him a cat-tastic life, and that he knew comfort and love in his last moments. I think he did, and for that I am grateful. I am also grateful that he does not have the mental machinery to question the rest of it. Pets, in their infinite mercy, don’t hold grudges. We went through some tough times in the past few years, but the magical thing about a cat is that if you welcome him onto your lap and stroke his head and scratch in that perfect place behind the ear, he’ll forget the rest and remember one thing—one thing that is true in that moment—he is loved.
Sharky was so loved. We adopted him after Brad and I had only been dating for a month. Our relationship was so new and fragile, in fact, that I worried Brad’s affection for me would be replaced by his affection for this new cat. That was how lovingly he gazed into Sharky’s eyes the moment he picked him out of the cage at Centinela Pet Supply. He’d been peering out at us from under an orange tabby who was perched on his head. (From the beginning, Sharky was patient with those more overbearing.) Brad said “That one. I want to see that one,” and the moment they looked at each other, that was it. They were family. And even though he was ostensibly “Brad’s cat,” I knew that he was mine, too. I was Brad’s person, and I was Sharky’s person, and we would be a family.
I was so madly in love with Brad so early on, and I think he with me, that our love imprinted itself right onto that cat. And it grew—broadened and deepened—as did our love for each other. And now he is gone. Now we move forward in a house with a missing piece. Brad and I have never been together without Sharky so to say we’ve lost a link that bonded us would be true but also incomplete. Brad is the only other person in the world who loved him as much as I did, maybe more, and that cannot be lost. It’s the love that’s the strongest. Strong enough to outlast a frail cat body when it’s ready to shuffle off this mortal coil. I just wish I could hold him one more time.
There are stories to be told about how you changed this world, Sharky. How you inspired family members to adopt cats because of the impression you made. How I was always certain that you were a boy in a fur suit and not really a cat at all. How your soulful blue eyes brought a gasp from anyone’s lips. Lots of stories. Too many to tell here, but I will tell them in time, Sharky. I promise. I will never forget you. Never.
It's almost a mental illness that we sign up for this. We adopt pets betting on two things: that we will love them with our whole hearts and that we will outlive them. Who signs up for heartbreak like that? And yet, I have learned more about life and death today than I have since the day Zelda was born. Confronting your death, my sweet cat, has been a most painful gift.
Memories, how precious they are. Regret, how inevitable it is and thus graceful we must be with ourselves. And guilt, how sharp. That I can do something about. I can care for the ones I love while they are still with me. I can tell them every day just how much I love them, so they never doubt it. I can turn my anger into patience, and I can be of service. I can let my cat get in my lap when he needs me. You taught me that, Sharky. You taught me so much.
I thought we had more time. I really did, and so when he tried to climb in my lap last night when I was in the middle of a “brilliant” writing session, I didn’t let him. I redirected him to Brad’s lap, and I continued writing something utterly unimportant, and I will live with that regret for a long time. We thought we had more time. I had it in my head that we were going to get him to eighteen, but fate had something else in mind. We never knew his birthday because we adopted him when he was about six months old. We only knew he was born in the spring, and so let’s say it was today. Sharky Machine Sigl Light, April 1, 2007 – April 1, 2022. Not enough time, but every moment worth it. We love you, old blue eyes. Thank you for looking at us on adoption day. We were so infinitely fortunate to be your people. We love you.
