I’ve long called Nova a serendipitous cat.
Appropriately, there was serendipity even in her passing.
We know we’re not the only ones grieving. So y’all need to hear the story of how she passed, and perhaps I need to tell it.
The past several days have been some of the worst of my life – largely because, Nova’s kidney numbers being what they were, there was nothing we could do except keep her comfortable and watch to decide when caring for her was no longer a mercy.
It’s the worst decision we’ve ever had to make, made even worse by the fact that her spirit was still as strong as ever. Her distinctive, wide eyes never lost their luster, and she never lost her loving, sassy expressions.
But she’d lost everything else.
Nova was a vocal enough cat that Jacob and I routinely carried on “conversations” with her, and she responded like she understood. She had a distinctive, delighted “prrt” she’d make when we surprised her with scritches. She had a ritual flop that she’d do whenever she wanted to be scratched on a certain part of her back, and she’d always do it during Jacob’s morning stretches, because his free hand was always perfectly positioned to give scratches. When Jacob sat down, she’d be in his lap in two seconds flat. (My lap was subpar, so she only sat in mine when he was at work.)
She’d done increasingly fewer of those things in the week leading to her fateful checkup.
The turning point was her tail flick. Nova has a distinctive tail flick that she does when she hears us say her name. She’ll do it in her sleep. It’s only for us. She does it with vigor even when she doesn’t feel well.
There came a point yesterday where she didn’t have the strength to flick her tail.
There were other, more conspicuous points, too – breath smelling like ammonia, cooling body heat, irregular breathing. I suspected that if we didn’t act that day, she’d suffer in the night from one of the dramatic results of kidney disease, and we wouldn’t be able to ease her suffering until the morning when the relevant services reopened. That’s no way for a cat like Nova to go.
But here’s where it gets serendipitous.
I’d sat down to write with her earlier that day, hoping to grant her what normalcy I could – and perhaps needing to have one last writing day with my cat. Once I suspected how the day would end, I burst into a hot mess of tears (a common theme of the past few days).
At which point – despite her weakness – Nova looked up at me with a distinct expression I see frequently on the writing porch. Only she knows what it means in her cat brain, but I interpret it as her “MA’AM, YOU SHOULD BE WRITING” look. And that day it came across as “Ma’am, I’m still your boss. My dying is no excuse for you to not be writing.”
I laughed, because well, it was so Nova.
But also, it felt like permission.
I talked to Jacob. He’d suspected the inevitability longer than I had, largely because Nova spends more time with him, and he could feel the nuances in her suffering before I could. He’s also the more realistic of the two of us, and I am an incorrigible shonen anime optimist who thinks I can solve every problem if I just yell and cry and fight hard enough to unlock my next power level. It works for most things. In cases like this, it’s my most painful trait. And I didn’t want my selfish optimism to be the thing that prolonged Nova’s suffering.
Thus, we made the appointment. We’d intended to have her put to sleep at home for her comfort (and because there’s only one thing in the world that she hates, and it’s cars), but the service our vet recommended wasn’t open that day. So we took her to her vet.
Which was another bit of serendipity.
See, Nova is beloved at my vet. A while ago, I learned that when they board her, she doesn’t get a little cat condo. If they have a free examination room, they give her the whole room. If any of the vets had a period where they needed to work in their offices, they’d let her hang out with them because they knew she enjoyed the company.
When we brought her in, every single vet and tech that we passed offered their condolences, and some cried. We weren’t the only ones losing her. They were losing her, too. We had people to grieve with, and Nova would be sent off by even more people who loved her – something that wouldn’t have happened if we’d gone with an at-home service we’d never used before.
But that was not the end of the serendipity.
See, I remember reading that sometimes, before cats pass naturally, they get a burst of energy so extraordinary it can trick their people into thinking they’ll recover. Perhaps it was that. Perhaps it was simply the change in environment that invigorated her curiosity.
But while we waited for the vets to make their preparations, she got it.
She explored the room. She sat in both our laps. She flopped for both of us. She prrted at our scritches. She squeak-talked as we spoke to her, in full conversations.
She flicked her tail every time we said her name.
We got to see every bit of the old Nova before the vets even returned to the room.
Again, it felt like permission.
Like she was comforting us, and ensuring that our last memory of her was a blessed one.
I held her in her blanket as she passed. Even then, she looked like herself. Her eyes sparkled so brightly, full of galaxies.
Jacob and I told her we loved her, and her last act on this earth was to flick her tail.
To know she was loved, and return it.
***
Our house is quiet now.
And I find reminders of Nova in my very muscle memory. Her stair step to our bed is no longer there, but my feet still avoid it in the dark. I went to my office to lure her from her nightly hiding place – the one she specifically goes to because she knows we’ll get her out by offering treats – before I realized she wasn’t there to hear the treat bag.
There’s not a single corner of our house she doesn’t inhabit.
But also – there’s not a single corner of our house she doesn’t inhabit.
She still lives there.
She just doesn’t have a body.
And, well, Nova was *always* more spirit than body.
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