This last Thursday, June 2, we had a vet come to the house and euthanize Nemesis, our 12-year-old cat. The night before I had seen that she could not walk straight anymore and was frighteningly frail. The next morning she could not hold her head up.

Still, deciding it is time for someone to die is a terrible decision to make, and determining that Nemesis would no longer live with us felt cold and calculating in a way I fear.

It is clear now, however, that Honey Bear is not the reason for Nemesis’ death. Yes, he brought in whatever illness she got and that definitely precipitated the speed of her decline. And yes, he may have bitten or scratched her as she was recuperating from the original illness, but something else was definitely wrong with her.

A few weeks back we brought Nemesis to the vet because she just wasn’t getting better. We had brought her before for the same reason weeks before, and she had been tested for diabetes and X-rayed and given an enema. She did a little better for a while and then kept wasting away.

This time they did another diabetes test, one that required a wait for the results and would tell us if she was just shedding sugar because she was stressed or because she was sick. The vet assumed we would agree to a sonogram and then chemotherapy if there was cancer. I had made Calvin come with me to this appointment because it was becoming clear that things were serious and getting worse, even if no one was saying it straight out.

I got this vibe when they asked me to sign a DNR, or a not DNR, for the enema, for which we left her at the clinic for a few hours. I tried to talk about this with the front desk people and they got very quiet. I did not think 9-pound Nemesis could withstand CPR if her enema went disastrously wrong so I did not approve extreme measures. But it was the first inkling that there were a lot of things no one said. The vet at this appointment (the one with enema) and the next one (with the sonogram) was very smiley, but not very clear.

That weekend the vet called and said Nemesis did not have diabetes and when could we come for a sonogram. We put them off and talked about it and read about chemotherapy for cats. There’s not much out there but there are side effects and the desired result is not a cure but life extension. Calvin and I and the kids agreed that Nemesis had been miserable while she was actively ill and we did not want to make her sick to extend her life. She seemed weak and we wanted her to enjoy her life.

I emailed the vets expecting guilt but they were very helpful, prescribing steroids and an appetite stimulant, and for two weeks the cat did very well. She did barely eat but she drank and she pooped and she slept with us and seemed pretty happy. Her fur looked awful: she has always been an extremely soft cat and did take pride in her delicate paws and her soft belly fur, but now she did almost no grooming. Her fur was spiky and so much thinner.

For the past week, I would let her sit on my chest and breathe my breath for as long as I could take it. This practice does mean sneezing but it was the only thing she seemed to want to do. If I wasn’t there, she hung out with Daisy in her room. When she got sick of sleeping with Calvin and me, she jumped onto Daisy’s pillow and made her sneeze.

One night I tried to brush her and she hated it. Only petting and breathing together.

OMG, how much longer can this person talk about her cat?

Yes, I know it’s tedious, so I’ll move into the more interesting parts. The visiting home vet turned out to be the same woman I had called in February to come look at Honey Bear and deal with his horrible poops. She asked me sharply how he played and what he liked to do. He does not play and seems to only enjoy eating and pooping and sleeping far away from us, and she told me it was a waste of time for her to come and “You need to do more work.” It was a not-fun chat.

I did not remind her of our previous talk and now realize that she is basically a death vet. She was putting pets down all over Brooklyn and Queens and got to us at 3:00 PM. She gave Nemesis a sleeping shot, and then did a drip into her. Nemesis fell fast asleep in a minute and Calvin and I held her as she died, which took about three minutes. The vet thought she was blind and might have a brain tumor.

Then she left and Calvin and I sobbed. It felt like the end of our family life, that Daisy will be going to college in the fall, the family cat was gone, our son only likes to talk to his friends, and we don’t know if we’ll stay in the house we thought we would grow old in, and die ourselves there, if we were lucky.

It was the end of all of that, all of it bundled into a tiny, scruffy gray cat. We see her ghost on our bed a few times a day now. I’ve put away the hoody that most looks like her. We did a little memorial yesterday, where we looked at the hundreds of photos of her that we’d taken.

Honey Bear changed immediately after Nemesis died

It was astounding. About 3 hours after she was gone, Honey Bear became more relaxed, friendlier, more social. He is now allowed on the top floor. The biggest change is there is no longer a litter box in the unused bathtub of our upstairs bathroom, which has both a shower stall and an old iron tub. That was where we put the hospice litter box for Nemesis, although it just began as an escape litter box from Honey Bear, which he used as often as he could sneak up there.

Quick Maggie update

She’s on a road trip. She flew to Orlando to see Paul McCartney and had to drive back. Not sure why but she is in an extreme bipolar episode and is planning on visiting people she doesn’t know on the way back.

It’s a wonderful feeling to know she’s not in the state.