I picked you out of a cardboard box in the Choicemart parking lot. You screamed at me — a strange woman in a white van — all the way home. For the first few months, you kept me up all night, biting my hands and feet. You were a thoroughly nocturnal creature.
Your arrival in my life signaled a period of intense change. I like to think you were the catalyst. (Pun intended.) Just a couple months after I adopted you, I hit bottom and got sober. You were there when I quit my job. When I got divorced. Through three moves. When I started writing. You kept me company when I was chained to the computer all day working, rubbing up against my legs and speaking a comforting yet undecipherable language of meows. You watched me buy an ergonomic kneeling chair on Amazon for $79.95 and then, when it arrived, used it as your personal scratching post.
I could never stay mad at you for long. Even when you caught and released live birds into my tiny one-room apartment at the crack of dawn. It seemed you enjoyed watching me as I flailed about, suddenly rocketed to consciousness by its ear splitting squawks of panic. “Pathetic. Totally pathetic. Can’t even make a kill when I bring it to her on a silver platter,” I imagined you thinking inside your murderous cat brain. In the case of a zombie apocalypse, the outlook was bleak for my survival. I understand now, in the 20/20 vision of hindsight, that you were just trying to train me.
You waited until I moved us right next door to a veterinary hospital to get sick. You stopped acting like your feisty self. You lazed about. I thought it was just the strange new place. Or maybe the fact that I had the audacity to sign a year lease with a roommate who had a dog. I didn’t realize that something was seriously wrong until things got bad. Your breathing became heavy. Your whole body convulsing as you struggled for air like an oxygen starved climber. There were steroids. Then X-rays and more tests. Your lungs were full of fluid. The final diagnosis — FIV and lymphoma. The prognosis — you wouldn’t make it more than a few weeks.
On Dec. 11, I made a decison to put you down. I didn’t want you to suffer anymore. You were a good cat, even if it had to put $450 on my credit card to cover your vet bills. I still feel like a cheapskate that I couldn’t afford to pay for a private cremation, that your ashes are all jumbled up with a pile of other critters, including canines, which you’ve always hated. But, I’m a self-employed writer and we don’t make a whole lot. I hope you can forgive me.
And, one more thing. If cat ghosts are for real, I give you full permission to haunt me.
Emily Gleason is business writer who normally contributes a monthly business column to West Hawaii Today. Her writing can be found at https://mthewriter.com/