It’s not just the night itself, when we had to decide to put Piggles to sleep. That was hard enough, even thought we knew it was both the kindest option considering the circumstance and what felt like the inevitability of it all. She was, after all, 18 years old — officially very old for a cat — and we’d been noticing that she’d been breathing heavier in recent weeks, but not to the point where it felt like it was a pressing issue until it so very, very much was.
(We’d made the decision and felt the paralyzing mix of regret and grief and sadness and uncertainty over have we done the right thing, is this the right thing to do? and then, soon after, were told that she couldn’t even be brought out of the oxygen tent to be intubated easily; knowing that felt like a strangely horrifying gift: if she was suddenly having such trouble breathing, we were definitely being kinder, saying goodbye that night.)
Nonetheless, we’d been — or I’d been, at least, all I can say for certain — unrealistically optimistic that she had longer left, that she was breathing heavier because of the weather or maybe it was arthritis because she was so old or any number of things that would allow us to pretend that, sure, she wasn’t a spring chicken anymore but she still had a lot of time left with us. She was Piggles, after all; she was, until the end, this tiny little cat with an oversized presence who was at once affectionate and demanding and ever-present. Life without her seemed unthinkable.
And that’s what I mean, when I say it’s not just the night of saying goodbye to her, and hoping that somehow she could tell through our head-scratches and cuddles that we loved her so fucking much. It’s been the afterwards of it all: her not being there when I expect her to be, the absence of her on the couch, or yelling at me when I’m in the kitchen, or running towards me when I get up in the morning because she wants to say hello and get breakfast. (Feeding her was the first thing I did when I got up every day, and the last thing I did before bed each night.) It’s her not being around when she was always around.
Even now, it feels like she’s around. Just not in all the ways I wish she was.
