This was supposed to be an English paper but I couldn't think about anything else when I found out she had to be put down. And I was actually in the middle of writing this when she died. If the timeline seems off, it's because it's real time.
My best friend died one day before her 13th birthday.
My mom looks at me, her best attempt at sympathy in her eyes, and says “It’s okay to be sad; she’s part of your family.” Hot angry rushed into my head and I wanted to scream at her, tell her “No, she’s the most important part of my family.” That cat means the world to me and now, I have to do the right thing and help her end her own life. Thirteen years of being my best friend, my confidant, my sister, my everything, is all about to swept away by a son of a bitch tumor.
That fucker. We had everything worked out. When the vet found the cancer in her eye last week, my brother and I broke. But that was a problem that half my savings could fix. Carly was to get an ennucluation, her eye surgically removed before the cancerous scoundrel could slip into her brain. Once she was put under anesthetics, the veterinarian found that wicked monster, only too late. It was growing on both sides of her teeth, she called to tell me, and surgery could help with nothing.
Oh, cruel world. Oh, cruel fate. I could bitch and moan about how everything bad happens to me, but it doesn’t. This is happening to her, not to me. I just have to live with it. But no, now we’re straying from the point. The point is, I love this cat more than anything in the world and now, happy as she is, she’s going to die in a few days whether or not she realizes it.
Carly is the best cat I could have ever wanted. People say one of the things they love about dogs is how they’ll come to greet you at the door when you come home, as if cats can’t do that. Carly was one of the most talkative cats I’ve ever known. She could gab for hours, telling me all about the latest gossip of the dust bunnies under my bookshelf or what dumb thing the dog did today. That cat would follow me all over the house, even if I was running up and down stairs. As she grew older, she may not have been right on my tail, but she always managed to catch up for a chat or just to rub her head against my head, purring so hard her whole body shook.
Cats are far more affectionate than the average dog-lover gives them credit for. I could see it in her eyes, how much that cat loved me back. Animal experts say that cats rub their heads on things so that the glands in their cheeks will rub their scent off, to claim something as their own. Carly has claimed me hundreds of thousands of times, meowing and purring up a storm, leaving no survivors in wake of her love. She looks out for me, too, even acting as my alarm clock in the morning or telling me when to go to bed so we can sleep side by side.
Some people think that a good cat has to be a lap cat, but I disagree. A lap cat isn’t necessarily a better cat, and Carly was only a lap cat for me. For anyone else, she would fuss and squirm if they tried to hold her and escape to the floor, darting around the nearest corner. But for me, she would sit for what felt like ages, her thick body weighing down my arms to the point that my arm would shake under her furry mass. I couldn’t take that away from her, though. She would just settle herself in, circling my thigh before dropping down to pulse her tiny, quiet paws against my leg before closing her eyes, purring like a racecar ready to explode from the starting line. As soon as I would go to pet her, she would right herself, immediately alert and anxious for attention, returning to her non-lap cat façade.
Even at the ripe old age of thirteen, Carly still loves to play. Christmas is her favorite time of year, because her favorite spectator sport is in season: wrapping presents. Carly is the ultimate sucker for curly ribbons and the sweet, crisp crunch the paper makes when crumpled by her unrelenting paws. Wrapping a present becomes a joyous challenge, trying to convince her not to sit on the roll or tear all of the bows off the packages. Under the tree, some gifts have even been opened preemptively, her fervor for the wrapping materials is so great.
This is the part where my writing is interrupted by the faint, distant vibrating of a telephone.
At first, she woke from the anesthesia just fine, the vet tells me. But then her face went blue and, when put on oxygen, she seemed to recover up until the point when her heart abruptly stopped and the doctors couldn’t revive her. She was gone before we could even pick her up to give her the best birthday ever before her euthanasia.
Have you ever cried so hard your teeth hurt?
Maybe this was just another way Carly was the best pet, as if she knew her time was coming to an end and she didn’t want to put me and my brother through the pain of having her die by our hands. The vet told me later, as my family stood around my cat’s limp body in the cold operating room, that she wouldn’t be at all surprised if Carly had been listening to our phone conversation, hearing the sad indecision in the quivering of my voice. She made the tough choice for us, when maybe we wouldn’t have been able to. Stranger things have happened in that hospital, the vet mused.
Fresh tears stung my exhausted face when I realized I no longer had to leave my bedroom door open a crack. I don’t have to walk as carefully in the upstairs hallway at night, trying to avoid kicking my furry roommate. I don’t have to worry anymore about waking her up in the middle of the night with my tossing and turning, but I wish I did.