Dolores was more than a pet. She was capa­ble of pro­found love (or burn­ing hatred), and that loy­al­ty made her feel more like a lit­tle per­son than a com­pan­ion. With the abil­i­ty to rec­og­nize peo­ple through win­dows, I’d often find her sit­ting on the sill at the front of the house, wait­ing to greet me with a cho­rus of raspy meows when I came home from work; a rit­u­al only spe­cial guests may be privy to, if they’ve pre­sent­ed the princess with enough presents.

I adopt­ed her in uni­ver­si­ty, and she was a con­stant pres­ence through many res­i­dences, house­mates, girl­friends — we even shared our space with oth­er cats for years at a time. When find­ing me after a few moments apart, she’d come lean against me with an arched back, invit­ing me to scoop her up, and I’d make a point of spend­ing a bit of time to cradling her like a baby, even if I was just pass­ing through. Sometimes we’d lie in the blan­kets and stare into each oth­er’s eyes; there was as much com­fort to be found in her purring as my warmth and atten­tion.

I could tell our bond was spe­cial from the start, and being fear­ful that I’d nev­er share any­thing like it with anoth­er cat again, always made sure to cher­ish every sec­ond.

Her port­ly shape was part of her per­son­al­i­ty, until she grew thin and frail in recent years, with ribs pro­trud­ing promi­nent­ly from her back¹. By the end of her life, she became an old lady who lost much of her spark and did­n’t adjust well to being shacked up with a row­dy teenag­er.

Then one day, I woke up to find her wob­bling uncon­trol­lably, with eyes con­stant­ly dart­ing from side to side as if watch­ing pass­ing scenery, even if in the mid­dle of an emp­ty room. With the sud­den­ness of the symp­toms, Heather and I were almost cer­tain she had a stroke. We knew it was time to put her down, and did­n’t want to pro­long her life just to avoid the pain of such a deci­sion. By that point, she was already suf­fer­ing dai­ly diges­tive prob­lems, and too weak to defend her­self from Byron’s antics. Just land­ing safe­ly on short sur­faces became a strug­gle.

Heather offered to go through the process as a way of sav­ing me the anguish, but I knew that if I could make Dolly’s final moments any eas­i­er, it was a small price to pay. So I did my best to tem­per my qua­ver­ing voice, calm my gasp­ing breaths, and repeat her name reas­sur­ing­ly. She was purring until the first shot sedat­ed her, and almost imme­di­ate­ly after the sec­ond shot, the droop­ing of her tiny ear told me she was gone for­ev­er².

It’s been a few weeks, and the house feels emp­ty and still with­out my lit­tle hon­ey gar­lic pork chop. At least hav­ing Heather through the whole expe­ri­ence has made it more bear­able; I need­ed some­one to under­stand exact­ly how hard the loss has been, and for a while we took turns cry­ing and hold­ing each oth­er.

It’s impos­si­ble to say what I cher­ished most about my rela­tion­ship with Dolly, but being part of her rou­tine is some­thing I start­ed to miss right away. No mat­ter her chang­ing habits through the years, she always made sure I was involved, most often to claim some part of my body while she groomed her­self. I can only hope to be so impor­tant to oth­er cats, or even peo­ple, in my life.

1. After his surgery, Byron end­ed up gain­ing a ton of weight, so for a while they were wear­ing each oth­ers cos­tumes. [↩]
2. In the moment between, when the nurse briefly took her out of the room to insert the catheter, I had the clar­i­ty to know that the expe­ri­ence I was going through was ago­niz­ing, but I’d sur­vive it. And know­ing that the pain would­n’t stop me from meet­ing more cats and falling in love again felt like an impor­tant step towards matu­ri­ty. [↩]