I had to put my cat down this week.
I hated that cat.
No, I'm sure I loved her, because when I brazenly called the pet hospital to make The Appointment, I started sobbing when the receptionist answered the phone. At least I can chalk it up to post-partum hormones.
OR BECAUSE SHE WAS MY FIRST BABY.
19 years ago (yes, she was living to spite me), I found her on a pick-up truck's tire in the parking lot of the health club at which I had an interview. I was not a cat person (dogs! only dogs!), but I told myself I could tolerate "it" enough to bring "it" to the humane society.
After finding a box in the club to transport "it" in, and having it tasmanian-devil itself inside of the box so much that we had to tape it shut and once we got in my car it still managed to escape and sit in my lap and oh my god don't let it scratch me while I'm driving and squee she's so cute she just yawned.
And then I kept her.
And she ate my bread crusts when I was barely an adult living my adult-ish first apartment.
She licked the top of the ice cream pint so I could feel like I shared.
She let me do voice overs for her in my single years (which I really don't recall, but have been told I did this... often).
And thanks for being highly tolerant of my children as they learned went through the "be gentle" phase.
The last few years, she probably thought her name was changed to "Stupid Cat" since she was often underfoot or sitting on the bathroom sick waiting for someone to turn on the water to a very specific pressure because GOD FORBID she drink fresh water out of her fancy cat geyser. (It must have been her getting back at me for letting my brother-in-law cat-sit her back in the day. [She hated him. Like, hated him. Hissed at him every time she saw him even though he often fed her.])
The last couple weeks she went outside (which she also hated) and she started drooling and she had a growth under her chin and she looked so damn skinny and it was getting weird and it was time.
And I put it off because her name was Chloe and I really liked her.
But I put The Call on my to-do list when I watched her struggle to get up one day and that was the beginning of the end.
I couldn't go into The Room at The End and the vet techs were so extremely nice. That Stupid Cat and I shared a moment where I swear she looked at me, cocked her head, and said, "Meorw," which I read as, "We had a good run, didn't we?"
Dammit.
