There is the unreality of the dead and then there is the reality of the dying. This is where I come–however sporadically—to reflect upon things that feel significant and I’m grateful for it. The space to write is like an extra room, sparsely furnished with open windows. This afternoon we will be putting our cat down. How strange it is to schedule such a thing; how different love and mercy look when the beloved is sick as opposed to well. Daphne is fifteen years old and her health has been declining for some time. She was always on the slight side, but now she’s only skin and bones (how apt this description is, though until you actually see and feel it, how cliched). She cannot eat or control her bowels or move with that lithe, acrobatic ease cats seem to flaunt in the face of our human clumsiness. The vet diagnosed her with advanced lymphoma a week ago. And yet, despite becoming so gaunt and frail, she remains herself in certain ways. She still purrs, however faintly, when we hold her. She still meets our gaze, blinking slowly and regally. She still hobbles into the same room as us, still wants to be wherever we are, despite my having read that animals tend to sequester themselves away when they’re dying. How strangely they would seem to spare us in this—how knowing and discreet creatures can be.
I used to joke that I would clone this cat if it were possible (which, apparently, it is; Barbara Striesand cloned one of her dogs twice). Unlike the cat I had as a child—and, quite frankly, most cats I’ve known—Daphne has always been absurdly sweet and sociable. She nuzzles the legs of strangers and flops at their feet for belly rubs, just like a dog. She joins us at the dining room table for every meal, as if to preside over the conversation or survey the food. She perches on the armrest of the couch when we watch TV, and she used to sleep curled on my feet every night when she could still jump up on the bed. This was glorious in the winter and maddening in the summer. When we first brought her home, she developed a profound attachment the printer but has only ever tolerated our dog. She let our daughter carouse roughly with her as a toddler, besotted every pet sitter we ever had, and never scratched, hissed, or even cried at the vet. She sent us into a panic when she somehow got her claw snagged under the refrigerator?!?, caught Covid, gulped down the Christmas tree water, or couldn’t be found when we had to rush to the basement for a tornado warning. She kneaded everything from laundry to laps, was crazy for the cardboard cubbies my daughter made her all throughout the house, and, though an indoor cat, darted outside at any chance she got for the express pleasure of rolling on the driveway. This, I think now, was a life. Her life. It was also our life together, bound up in ways both intricate and banal. Clone her though we could, none of it would be replicated exactly as it was, and it’s this singularity that gives shape to the loss.
It occurs to me now that Daphne will have died on Feb. 13, and our dog was born on Feb. 15, with Valentine’s Day sandwiched squarely in between. How auspiciously love leaves and enters our lives, and why not? It’s the main event.
Well, then 