My cat Loca died two weeks ago. I don’t even know what snippy trite introduction to say about this post, because the whole thing is so horrible, especially after just losing Squeak, and I’m still trying to get past it, and it’s not easy.
Like I mentioned in my previous post about Squeak, we got both cats in 2007 from Humane Colorado, and Loca was the more outgoing alpha of the two, and a year older. She was a black Turkish Angora, an absolutely beautiful animal. She was very social, vocal, playful, active, and crazy, hence her name. In many ways she was a cat’s cat, and loved to eat, hunt, play, be brushed, and get her way about everything. In other ways, she was very non-cat like, more like a dog. I think because I worked from home so much, she became very attached and would follow me everywhere, and demand everything according to her schedule. She also slept far less than other cats. Squeak would be out for 18 or 20 hours of the day, spending the other time transitioning between sleeping spots. Loca probably slept only eight hours a day, and most of it very lightly, as she always had to be aware of everything going on.
Squeak’s health was a long, slow decline. Pretty much for the last two years, we watched her weight drop and her mobility become more of a problem, and wondered how much time she had left. Loca’s health was never a question. She never got fat, always stayed active, and never had any major issues other than hairballs and general fussiness about food. She did start to have hyperthyroidism and a slight weight drop a few years ago, but medication seemed to stop that. I had a lot of worries that Loca would not be able to cope as a single cat after Squeak was gone, but she seemed to be making the adjustment. I knew this was not going to go on forever, but she was still running and playing and eating, and I thought we had a few more years with her.
This all happened quickly. She was very on and off with her food, and would have these coughing episodes that we assumed were hairball-related, but she’d never throw up and no amount of hairball medication or cat grass would help. I came home from work on a Monday and found she hadn’t eaten at all and was doing more of the coughing and brought her to the ER, fearing the worst.
I don’t want to get into the blow-by-blow details, but it was chronic heart failure, and we thought we had a few weeks to make her comfortable, and I had to quickly change that to a few days. On Saturday, we had Lap of Love come over.
Loca’s birthday was a week before, on Halloween. We have one of those Womb chairs in the living room, and right before dinner, I was sitting in the sun, looking at my phone, and Loca crawled up unprompted, stretched out on my chest, and sat there for twenty minutes, purring and looking at the sunlight. I knew this was a core memory that would be burned into my head forever, even though I did not know it was her last birthday.
On Saturday the 8th, I sat in the Womb chair again and she died in my arms. I cannot put into words how horrible this felt. I am glad it was this and not an agonizing end while I was asleep and she was suffering. I’m glad I was able to take a few days off and spend them with her, even if she was now unable to climb stairs and we had to set up camp in the middle of the living room with pillows and food and a heating pad and a litter box. But this was my familiar, my best friend. I’d spent a third of my life with her, 18 years. I worked from home almost the entirety of her life, and talked to her every day. I’ve had many rough years in the last decade, and spent a lot of time thinking I was completely alone, but Loca was always there. Now she’s not.
Two things happened at the very end that were quintessentially Loca. When the doctor came on Saturday and Sarah went downstairs to let her in, Loca got up from her bed, went to the bowl, and pigged out on Churu, her absolute favorite food. It was hilarious that we spent all this time worrying about her food and getting her to eat, and here she was, two minutes before her end, chowing down on this smelly chicken goo in a tube that she loved so much.
The other thing. When they do this, they give a first injection of ketamine, and then after a few minutes when the cat is calmed down, they give them the big shot. With Squeak, Sarah was holding her when she got the ketamine, and she just stayed in her arms and relaxed. With Loca, the vet came over to her on the floor and gave her the first shot. And instead of sitting there waiting for me to pick her up, she had to get up, do a lap of the room, then go under the kitchen table and stare at me, telling me that I had to come to her. She would do this diva stuff all the time: beg for attention, then when you came to give her attention, she would walk away and say, “No, you follow me.” I absolutely love and cherish that she had to do this one last time. She was Loca until the end.
I am suddenly not a pet owner. There has been this awkward transition because now we realize every piece of furniture we own is either cat furniture or has been damaged by cats or is covered in cat hair. And I can’t bear to do a full sweep of the house and dump it all in the garbage. The food and the medicine all got donated. The litter boxes are gone. Her favorite toys are sealed in plastic and packed away. But it’s so absolutely quiet now. I wake up in the morning to feed them and… fuck. It’s been hard.
I know there will be others. I think we’re waiting until after the holiday travel and then we’ll find two more. But we got damn lucky when Loca came in our lives, and it’s a monumentally huge hole to fill.