A Link to Before
Two weekends ago we lost our 16-year-old cat. We also got a puppy so it was a weekend of a lot of emotion, but Ellie left this world the way she lived in it: quietly and sweetly.
In early 2005 I was out of town, and my brother was feeding my cats. My male cat, Truman, unexpectedly passed away (he was only 5), and I decided I wasn't going to get another cat. When I got home, however, my Daisy was walking around my apartment mournfully crying. After a few weeks of all the crying I decided I would get her another friend.
I found a beautiful, long-haired, grey, 6-month-old cat at a rescue, and I decided I'd adopt her. I picked her up from her foster home, brought her back to my apartment, and she didn't come out from under my couch for two days. She was quiet, shy, and a bit skittish, but after a few months she was quite at home.
She loved to lie in the sun in the front window of my first floor apartment, greeting the UPS delivery driver and all of my neighbors. She would stretch her long, skinny body and reach to greet me. She quickly became part of our little family.
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| Daisy and Ellie in my Norfolk apartment |
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| Shortly after Ellie came home |
She loved our new home in Michigan. I had a two-story apartment with a spiral staircase, and Ellie loved to hang over the steps and survey the whole space. When I later met my now husband and moved in with him, the cats made the trip to a smaller apartment. Then we decided to throw a wrench in the whole situation by getting a puppy. Ellie would hiss at Murphy and hit him in the face, but she adapted well to her new canine brother.
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| Ellie and 6-week-old Murphy |
My most memorable Ellie story was shortly after we moved into our first home. We were heading to northern Michigan after work for the weekend where I was running a half marathon. As we left for work I mentioned to my husband that I hadn't seen Ellie that morning. I looked around and called for her, and she didn't come running. She liked to hide, so this wasn't unusual, but I had a weird feeling. I came home for lunch and looked for her again to no avail. I came to realize she may have snuck outside when I let the dog out.
My husband and I were in the office, and I was really worried. He also went home to look for her and she wasn't there. I couldn't imagine leaving for a long weekend without knowing where she was. I later got home and was outside calling for her, I heard a faint cry. The house next to us was vacant, and I jumped their fence and waded through the tall, unkempt grass calling for Ellie. I jumped the fence on the other side and heard her more clearly. She was wedged between two rocks behind a shed crying pitifully. I rescued her and carried her home, so relieved to see her. My husband and I were snuggling her, and our other cat ran to see her. Ellie hissed, smacked the other cat in the face and ran away, seemingly wondering what all the fuss was about.
For the past decade Ellie was a pretty chill cat, although to be honest she liked to be annoying in the worst cat ways: crying to keep us up at night, jumping in our faces while on zoom calls the last year, and biting you when you were petting her nicely. Although she drove me crazy, she was still my girl.
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| Ellie and Will joining me on a video call |
When your cat is 16 you expect that there won't be too many more years, but Ellie went downhill quickly. In just a few short days she seemed to really be struggling. I called the vet on a Saturday morning and took her in for an urgent appointment. The vet called and said she was severely dehydrated and recommended we run additional diagnostics like lab work and x-rays. The vet said it'd take about a half an hour, so I was surprised when she called me ten minutes later to say the x-ray did not look good. She said we'd gone from critical to grave and recommended compassionate euthanasia.
I was told I couldn't be in the room while they administered euthanasia because of COVID-19 protocols, so I drove back to the clinic to say good-bye in my car. The tech brought Ellie out who was freaked out and confused to be sitting in my car with me. I gave her snuggles, petted her, sobbed my face off and said good-bye. Then I handed my still alive cat to the tech who said "I'm sorry for your loss". The worst part was not being able to be there with her in her last days (I type this and realize that's been happening to humans who have been dying of COVID-19 this last year which is horrific).
We'd only gotten our puppy the day before, but when we were putting her in the crate in our room on Ellie's last night she ran up to Ellie. Ellie didn't react at all to a 40-pound puppy coming at her which was a bad sign. But she got to meet our new pup and give her blessing as the pet elder.
My eyes hurt from crying so much that weekend, but Ellie's death felt like more than the loss of a pet. My dad was not a cat person at all (although he mildly tolerated the menagerie of cats my sister and I brought home over the years). But my dad knew Ellie. He knew that she was my cat, and as long as she was alive it hadn't been that long since he was too. I remembered getting Ellie in Norfolk, a place where I felt like a grown up for the first time. I got her when my niece was a baby. She was a link to a precious time in my life, and her death felt like that link was severed.
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| Ellie napping with Will |
It's not of course, and I still have those memories. But for 16 years Ellie waited for me outside the shower. She slept next to my pillow and later next to my son's. She was a lithe, supermodel of a cat who sashayed through so many memories in my life: my move to Michigan, meeting my husband, meeting our son, the death of my father, father-in-law, another cat and dog, our fertility struggle, stress, jobs, the works.
I see her in the corner of my eye everywhere I go upstairs, before I remember she's not there. My quiet, unassuming, pretty girl is gone, but I'm grateful for her sweet companionship for the bulk of my adult life.
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