We are in charge of them, and in charge of their health and safety, and in exchange they help us care about parts of ourselves, and they oftentimes teach us how to love ourselves and each other in better ways with their own uncomplicated and unconditional affection for us.
We put Felix down yesterday. She would've turned 17 this month, and late last week she stopped eating. Over the weekend, we took her to the vet and they diagnosed her with an advanced kidney disease, and we made the hard decision to put her to sleep rather than force her to endure a lower quality of life and some harsh treatments.
She was an old kitty, and she was tired, and she lived a good life, and I will miss her. I haven't even known many PEOPLE that I've been close to for 17 years, and we got Felix when I was 12 and got straight A's. My relationship with that cat outlasted four boyfriends, multiple best friends, four different schools, me living in two different states and five different houses, and a wealth of life lessons between the day I brought her home for the first time and bringing her Home yesterday.
I couldn't be at the vet with my family because I didn't think I could emotionally handle being there for that. I'd been crying off and on since Friday, and when we took her to the vet on Saturday I could hardly hold myself together and my mom had to answer all the questions because I couldn't speak. Katie thought one of us should be there for her at the end, and I couldn't do it. A part of me feels cowardly for not being able to, but the rest of my family was there with her so I can take some comfort in knowing that she wasn't alone.
We buried her in the backyard next to a tree that will have yellow flowers come spring. My parents had her paw imprinted in clay. My mom bought a little brown cross, and in the clearest handwriting I could muster, I wrote "March 1999 to March 2015. Felix was the best cat." on it. I might bedazzle it, because the plain brown is not notable enough for my little cat with her big personality.
I think I haven't really processed her absence, but the last few days were terrible, with seeing how slow she was moving and her rapidly declining health and I don't want to remember her like that.
Felix was named for her black and white markings because we originally thought she was a boy when we brought her home. She was the runt of her litter, and I picked her for her small size (something I could relate to with my own lack of height) because I've always loved the unexpected underdogs. She would sometimes bite people, and she taught herself to ring the doorbell to make us let her back inside. She was great at sitting on laps and in boxes, and anywhere else it was inconvenient for her to plop down on (frequently on my books or papers while I was trying to work on them) and had a wonderful purr. If you let her into your bed, she would snuggle up under the covers and nuzzle your feet. She hated other animals, was unafraid of dogs twice her size, and had a sassy attitude that made roughly half of my friends and any visitors to the house fear her. She loved cheese and Doritos and vanilla ice cream (we didn't purposely feed these to her, but she always managed to find a way to sneak a bite when we weren't paying attention), and was amazingly tolerant of all the times I cried into her fur (which was A LOT over the years, as I am ... very emotional and incredibly dramatic).
When I played piano she'd sit next to me on the bench and listen to me. I'd often pretend I was Jenny and she was Oliver (OH GOD I MADE THE MISTAKE OF WATCHING THIS VIDEO AND NOW I THINK I WILL NOT STOP CRYING) from Oliver & Company, even though neither of us had the right coloring of our animated and copper-haired counterparts.
She was a good cat, and she was my cat, and I will miss her dearly. I am so lucky to have had so long with her, and so lucky that my life has been so sheltered from death and sadness that this heartbreak of losing a beloved family pet is a brand new sensation I'm only just discovering at the age of twenty-eight years old. I've been so blessed and so loved, and I take comfort in knowing that Felix was also so so loved. Through all of this, I keep reminding myself, "I am so lucky. We were so lucky. We are all so lucky" to have had each other, and to continue to have each other in the family and friends that remain. That's the real magic of allowing yourself to love and be loved: with any and every heartbreak, love in my life somehow never actually diminishes, even if it sometimes feels like there are fewer hearts to spread it around to.
There was a moment during the last few days, when I was incoherently sobbing over the impending loss of Felix, that I thought, "I wish I had never had her, because losing her now is too much and I cannot deal with it." and in the quiet of my heart, while locked in the soft gaze of her hazy green eyes while I stroked her black and white fur as we laid on the cold kitchen floor together, another voice in my head whispered a little louder, "Never regret anything leading up to moments of pain like this, because getting to love her for seventeen years has made any of this sadness worth it. In moments when you have a choice between love and fear, always choose love."
So thank you, Felix, for reminding me that honestly and freely-given love is always worth it, will always be worth the tears at having to say goodbye to it*. Always choose love.
*In typical disclaimer fashion, I feel the need to point out that the love I am talking about being worth the pain is a healthy love, and not something that is causing you physical or emotional pain. So. Just keep that in mind. Don't choose that kind of love, as that is not love. Okay bye.
