Tag Archives: cats

Goodbye, Pearl

Post Syndicated from Eevee original https://eev.ee/blog/2022/01/25/goodbye-pearl/

Pearl laying on carpet, bathed in a sunbeam that highlights her peach fuzz

A Chronicling of the Lyfe and Times of one Miss Pearl Twig Woods, who has Passed at a Young Age from Troubles of the Heart. She is survived by Anise, her Arch Nemesis; Cheeseball, her Adoptive Ruffian; and Napoleon, her Star-Crossed Suitor for Whom she Longed from Afar.

Pearl is… difficult to describe. She had such a strong, vibrant personality.

She was lovely, that’s for certain. She loved everyone she met. And while various people — friends, vets, etc. — have met our cats and always liked them, I don’t believe anyone has met Pearl and not adored her. Anise will check out your stuff and perhaps jump on you; Cheeseball will do antics for you and rub on your leg; but Pearl would accept you into her life and be very directly, personally affectionate with you specifically. She made you feel special.

At the same time, she was very fussy, very particular, and had a very strong sense of… her place in the world, I suppose. If she liked something, she would be having it. If she didn’t like something, she would make that exceptionally clear. She was never mean, but she would be very vocal about her boundaries.

It wasn’t uncommon to wake up to Pearl repeatedly headbutting me right in the face, pressing her head up under my chin, or giving me a nuzzle with the entire length of her body, purring all the while. If she was happy to see you, she made an entire production out of it. It wasn’t just us; guests who slept on the couch also got the Pearl wake-up call.

It was also not uncommon to wake up because Pearl had decided that she needed my pillow, and somehow this very small cat took up the entire thing. I couldn’t move her; trying to displace her from a comfortable spot would generally earn you a sad, offended meow, after which you felt guilty for even having entertained the notion in the first place.

One of her particular quirks was to often “bury” her food when she was done with it, or at least paw fruitlessly at nearby carpet. On its own, this is endearing but not unusual — burying leftovers is a common cat instinct, even if we’ve not seen it in our other cats. What made it a uniquely Pearl trait was that she would also perform this ritual if offered something she didn’t want at all. I laughed every time; it was such an audacious way to indicate utter disinterest. Take it away, please. Put it in a hole, if you would.

She got, more or less, everything she wanted. If she claimed a spot, everything about her expression and body language indicated it was clearly hers, even if that spot was your body. (Naturally, if you moved too much or even sneezed suddenly, she would tell you off for that too.) If she wanted to ride on your shoulders, that’s what would be happening. If it was time to feed her and she was too comfortable in her cat tree, well, we’d just have to hold the food up for her. She had a way of looking very pleased with herself that was impossible to argue with.

I first met Pearl in 2014, shortly after we moved to Las Vegas. She was tiny, even for a kitten, and apparently the runt of her litter. I don’t remember what specifically compelled Ash to adopt another cat, except that they love cats, but what a selection.

I cannot stress enough how small she was. You know those solid wood desks that have a column of drawers built into them on one side? You know how they often have a little decorative shape carved out at the bottom with molded edges? Pearl could crawl into that space. I couldn’t believe it the first time I saw it; the gap is so short that I’d never even thought to categorize it as a space, let alone one a cat might enter, but she slunk into it like it was nothing. I was so worried we’d have to move the desk somehow to get her out, but she usually turned around and came right out again. I still remember the very last time she did it — I could tell she was having to shimmy a bit to fit in there, and she must have noticed too, because I never saw her even try it again.

The other cats had somewhat mixed feelings. Napoleon didn’t like her at all and hissed directly in her face, but… after that, I don’t remember any bad reactions from him at all, so I guess he warmed up quick. Anise did not seem to understand what a kitten was, tried to play with her, and then acted very confused when that didn’t seem to work. And Twigs…

Oh, Twigs. Twigs was jealous. He had always been Ash’s cat, he had made himself Ash’s cat, and he very quickly inferred that Pearl was a threat to his position. Another cat! In Ash’s lap! Unthinkable!

On one particular night Ash had barred Twigs from the bedroom to sleep with just Pearl, but came downstairs to visit the kitchen. Twigs ran up to them, looked them dead in the eye, and let out a huge sad wail to convey his feelings about the depths of this betrayal.

They let him into the bedroom after that, but he opted to sit across the room and stare daggers at Pearl, moving a little closer every half hour until he was on the far corner of the bed. Just staring.

Ash eventually had to bribe him by putting some cottage cheese on Pearl’s head, after which he decided Pearl was okay. Also he found out that he could fit himself in Ash’s lap alongside Pearl, so that probably helped.

Oh, and she loved to be cozy. She loved to be cozy. Sphynxes are naturally drawn to warmth, of course, but Pearl elevated it to an artform. If I’m propped up in bed, Anise might stand next to me to look at the covers expectantly, or he might just lay down nearby. Pearl would stand right on top of me and pull at the covers with impressive force until I lifted them for her, let her lay on my chest, and tucked her in.

We’d often find Pearl very awkwardly tucked under the edge of a blanket somewhere, having attempted to insert herself beneath it with mixed success. We described this as Pearl doing it all by herself, and complimented her on how talented she was, and then fixed the blanket for her.

We have heater vents in the floor, and one of her favorite pastimes was to sit on one of those, often covering the entire thing, and be gently toasted from below. Sometimes Anise would see what a great idea that was and try to share it and they would end up squabbling.

If there was a sunbeam to be found, Pearl would find it. Much like with vents, she didn’t like to share sunbeams, even if they were half the width of the room. She found it first, you see.

Other places she discovered that were lovely and toasty included: in front of the fridge where the warm air vented out from the bottom; straddling the PS4 so the fan blew onto her tummy; next to or underneath my laptop; on top of my computer case which has a fan vent on top; in front of the heat dish we got while our furnace wasn’t working; and in a laundry hamper full of freshly-dried laundry.

She liked to go outside, too, during the summer. All of our cats are indoor-only, but once in a while we’ll take the more well-behaved ones (not Cheeseball) into the backyard to wander around on the porch and sniff things and enjoy the sun and look at a bird.

And I have never known a cat to be quite so comfortable. Perhaps Anise, on occasion, but he doesn’t have the raw talent Pearl was born with.

You could tell she was settling in if she tucked her paws in against her chest, something she always did quite deliberately and distinctly. But that was only the first stage of comfort. If you were lucky, she would stretch out one arm really far, perhaps to place her paw on you. As she dozed off she might lay flat on her side with her limbs outstretched, which meant we always had to check blankets carefully for a flattened Pearl before sitting down. And if you were really lucky, you might witness Pearl in a chaos configuration, upside-down with her paws wherever.

But even just sitting up with her eyes closed, she looked so content. Looking at photos makes me want to take a nap with her.

Sadly, Pearl had some health troubles from the start. She had a kink right at the base of her tail from the day we got her, suggesting it had been injured while at the breeder and not healed right, so she was never able to raise her tail all the way. She also came home with some sort of intestinal parasite that gave her a lot of… um, gastric distress, and while we were able to clear that up quickly, it seemed to recur soon afterwards.

We took her to the vet again, suspecting more parasites, but multiple tests turned up nothing. We tried a number of things — different food, sensitive-stomach food, wet food, more water, different treats — but could not seem to figure it out, and so Pearl just had stomachaches on and off for a while. Sometimes she would sit by the litterbox and grumble, and all I could do was try to reassure her.

It wasn’t until a few years later that Ash’s then-husband, with no explanation whatsoever, spontaneously decided to just feed her some plain chicken mixed with pumpkin purée. Just like that, she was fine. I felt like kind of an idiot for not trying that earlier, but after giving her veterinary sensitive-stomach food and seeing no change, I thought we’d ruled out food sensitivity.

We swiftly outlined a general idea of what Pearl could or could not tolerate. Chicken, pork, pumpkin: OK. Beef or any kind of organs: she immediately threw up. Fish: no good. And yet manufactured food containing only very simple things still gave her stomachaches, so our best guess was that she also couldn’t tolerate fucking xantham gum or something, which is in pretty much all pet food, including the sensitive stuff.

Regardless, we had a diet she could stomach, so for the rest of her life we made her a custom diet of ground chicken, ground pork belly, pumpkin, and some nutrient powder that didn’t bother her (which took several attempts to find). That meant no more free-feeding the other cats, so we got a big dog cage to keep the kibble in, and we’d let the other cats in there while Pearl was eating her special princess food. Thus began a multi-year saga during which, every four hours, like clockwork, Anise would start bothering me to feed him.

Please do not tell me what I could have done to dissuade Anise or space out the schedule. I guarantee, he is vastly more dastardly and annoying than you are giving him credit for. The cats run this household, and I have long since made peace with that.

The closest to any real insight we got about Pearl was that perhaps her kitten parasites had left her with IBS — a very vague diagnosis of exclusion, and the best anyone could come up with. But Pearl was happy, so that was good enough. We eventually found new treats she could stomach, too.

Pearl had relatively intense relationships with the other cats, much like she did with people.

She adored Napoleon, our furred and largest cat, for some reason. She often trotted up to him, very eager to sniff him; or when he trotted towards the kibble cage in recent years, she would run alongside him, staring sideways at him. I don’t really understand what her feelings were, and Napoleon didn’t really return them, but he at least tolerated them. Curiously, I can’t remember many attempts on Pearl’s part to snuggle up to Napoleon; she mostly snuggled with the other sphynxes.

She and Twigs (her uncle, incidentally) spent a ton of time together, and Anise was often in the mix as well. They’d often end up in a pile under or within a blanket, or all wedged into the same cat bed, or piled on a chair that had a towel on it. Sometimes she’d grumble at Anise for being too much in her personal space, but somehow Twigs’s presence seemed to defuse everything. I can’t remember her ever grumbling at Twigs, in fact.

Cheeseball is the only cat we have who’s younger than Pearl. When he was a kitten, she kind of doted on him like a mom, frequently trying to groom his head. She kept doing this into his adolescence, even as he was swiftly growing bigger than her, which was endearing and also very funny.

We moved in 2018, and spent the summer with a former acquaintance’s parents, as they had a finished and furnished basement that was practically an apartment all on its own. Unfortunately, they had four cats of their own, for a total of nine crammed into a relatively small space. (One of the parents couldn’t be around cat hair in the medium term, due to reasons.)

One of the cats, Seamus, was a maine coon, and by all accounts kind of an asshole. He made a habit out of chasing Napoleon around, which Napoleon did not like at all, and which would result in Pearl chasing him to defend Napoleon, and then Anise chasing after Pearl because everyone is running around and he doesn’t quite understand why but he doesn’t want to be left out. We kept the cats separated as best we could, but we didn’t have much space to work with, and we were already trying to sequester Cheeseball, who we’d just adopted as a kitten. Everything was just kind of a mess.

Anyway this kinda stressed everyone out.

I bring it up because of one particular event. The only segregated parts of the basement were the bathroom and a somewhat awkwardly-shaped bedroom. The bedroom was exclusively for our cats. I don’t remember exactly what led up to this, but at some point Seamus made a beeline for the bedroom while Pearl was just inside the open door. I’m guessing Napoleon was in there too.

Pearl was absolutely not having this. She stood her ground and hissed hard enough to stop this absolutely massive cat in his tracks. She was so mad that she peed on the floor (which was, thankfully, vinyl). We got there to intervene about half a second later, but wow! She drew a line in the sand and under no circumstances was this bully going to cross it. We have always looked back fondly upon this “rage piss” incident.

I think Pearl was left a little rattled, though. Even at the time, she growled at the other maine coon there, who was an absolute sweetheart and rarely did more than sit nicely and ask to be pet. Once we were out of there, she seemed a little distrusting of Anise, often growling at him or biting his haunch merely for sitting nearby (which would entice a bewildered Anise into smacking her, justifying her reaction). I wish we hadn’t stayed there.

Cheeseball was also growing up and wanted to play with Pearl, because playing is how he engages with pretty much everything; alas, he was a bit too rowdy for Pearl. Twigs, infinitely patient, was there to absorb a lot of this.

But then Twigs died, and the cats’ relationships seemed to deteriorate. Cheeseball liked Pearl, but he always wanted to fight with her, which she didn’t like. Anise liked Pearl, but she seemed to resent him a lot of the time, and there was no Twigs to separate them. Pearl liked Napoleon, but Napoleon liked to be by himself.

It was okay, but tense.

Maybe I’m overstating this. Going back through photos of Pearl, I’ve found plenty from the post-Twigs era where she’s still hanging out with Anise peacefully. A number of their conflicts even started because she would approach Anise to sit by him, then growl at him. No wonder he was confused. Sometimes she would groom him and start growling, while licking his ear. Hello? What are you doing?? What do you want from him here.

Still, that must mean she still liked him. She just had some complicated feelings. It always made me a little sad when they couldn’t get along, though. I’d gotten Anise in the first place in part to give Twigs a friend, and Pearl and Twigs had always gotten along well, and now… well.

Having said all this about how great and lovely Pearl is, her presumptuousness also made her a huge pest in some very specific ways. For example, once we’d settled into the food routine that saved her from constant stomachaces, one of her favorite things to do was to go over to the kibble cage and try to find kibble that had escaped from it. If she could get away with it, she would stick her paw between the bars and pull kibble (or the entire bowl) out to eat.

It was slightly annoying, and also very funny. We called this pulling a heist. And then she’d have awful gas some hours later.

I also very distinctly remembering getting takeout one time, which happened to include a breaded and fried slab of fish. I had the little takeout container on the table in front of me, and I think I was fiddling with the wrapper on their plastic fork or something, when Pearl came along, sniffed it… and then bit the fish and pulled the whole filet out of the container. Right in front of me! Points for boldness, I guess. She wasn’t quite so audacious any other time, but she must’ve really liked the smell of that fish.

And while she was generally pretty picky about what she would consider a toy, she did, on occasion, like to bite the arms of my glasses. Once I was laying next to her and petting her while she purred, and she stuck a paw in between my glasses and my face, pulled them off, and tried to bite them — purring all the while.

My favorite Pearl trick was what we dubbed “mouse alert”. If Pearl was looking for someone — often anyone at all, but sometimes a particular person who was absent or in a room with a closed door — she would find one of her toy mice and carry it around doing a very loud, muffled meow. If she saw you she would then drop the mouse and trot over, making happy high-pitched meows instead.

Sometimes she’d start out with regular meows, which we could hear from the other side of the house, but then they’d abruptly turn deeper and longer, and we knew she’d picked a mouse up. It was so charming and so funny. Every so often we’d find a pile of mice outside a door and we knew that Pearl had been trying to open it. She later expanded her roster to include Big Mouse — a plush almost half her size who became her favorite — and a plush of a single HIV virus that she must’ve stolen from my desk.

She didn’t play with the mice, either. I have video of her playing with a mouse when she was fairly young, but it’s not one of the mice we have now. She seemed to regard them as precious, her comforting belongings that she could almost always lure us out of hiding with. “Come look at my mouse!” Sometimes she’d carry them around quietly, just to have one or two nearby in a comfortable spot.

I tried for her whole life to get a recording of this, which proved nearly impossible, because she’d stop if she knew anyone was nearby! I got a clear recording only once, a week before she died; I was in our dark bedroom, filming into Ash’s office, and I don’t think she realized I was there. There’s a link at the bottom.

Her other favorite possession was string. Pearl loved to play string. She would ask for it by name. No, really. If she wanted to play string, she would find (or bring) a string and sit on it hoping someone noticed, and if that didn’t work, I’m pretty sure she had a specific meow for asking you to please follow her to string and then play with it.

Playing string with her was a slightly frustrating affair, but perhaps I just didn’t understand the rules. They seemed to be: I should wiggle the string; then Pearl grabs the string; then Pearl keeps the string. That doesn’t end the game, though. I should keep trying, in vain, to get the string back, while Pearl simply keeps winning.

A great thing to do was dangle it above her, at which point she’d stand up to try to get it and chomp at it, audibly. I loved her little chomp sound. I can’t even do it myself; I feel like I’d hurt my teeth.

After she was through adolescence, string was the only thing she really wanted to play with. She might’ve chased a laser pointer a couple of times, but string was the one thing she would ask for. Occasionally I’d try to play with Anise with a string, but Pearl had a fucking sixth sense for when string was happening, and she would appear from nowhere and go absolutely nuts over it while Anise sat back and watched.

In March 2021, I took Pearl to an ER vet over very rapid breathing. They told me she’d had fluid in her lungs and diagnosed her with congestive heart failure. That’s when your heart can’t pump hard enough; part of Pearl’s heart wall had thinned and weakened, and one chamber was enlarged. She had to be hospitalized overnight. I drove home thinking I’d never see her again.

They couldn’t identify a cause. She was given a prognosis of “not fantastic” and prescribed a growing mountain of medication, which Ash dutifully gave to her every twelve hours for months on end, even when Pearl refused it. Sometimes Pearl had to be bribed with treats in order to eat at all, though I later traced that to a batch of food with insufficient pumpkin for her liking.

We had to keep her stress level low, which meant keeping her completely separated from the other cats (or at the very least Cheeseball) as much as possible. That meant Ash vanished into a closed room for most of every day to work while keeping an eye on Pearl — who was, after all, Ash’s cat. That also left me with three other cats constantly vying for my attention.

For several months we often couldn’t even sleep in the same room — Pearl and Anise couldn’t be left together, and Anise makes a racket all night if he’s shut out. Early on, our roommate would often take Pearl overnight (even despite being allergic to cats), but as time went on, Ash felt a stronger impulse to be around her as much as possible. Eventually we found we could have both Anise and Pearl overnight as long as we put a sweater on Anise and had sufficient extra blankets on the bed, but honestly it felt like a constant logistical nightmare.

Even with all this, we still had several more ER visits, several more hospitalizations.

Still, Pearl seemed to be doing okay. She was happy, she engaged with us, she purred, she snuggled, she nuzzled, she played. She was fine, and stable, until she wasn’t.

It was January 11, and it was the first ER visit for rapid breathing in a while. We handed her over, they hospitalized her, and we left, assuming we’d pick her up in the morning and she’d be fine, as had always happened.

We weren’t home for long before they called us. Pearl wasn’t recovering this time, and wouldn’t make it through the night.

We raced back. We saw Pearl, struggling to breathe, even on oxygen. We pet her and told her it would be okay. She cried out for help. Ash held her.

And then we let her go.

I love and miss so many little things. She had such beautiful eyes, like Twigs did, though she squinted a lot so it always felt like a special treat when I could see them clearly. Her whole face scrunched when she meowed. She had a marble pattern, so I guess she would’ve been a calico. I didn’t even notice it when we first got her, and then one day it jumped right out at me and I felt briefly like our kitten had been replaced with a different one. She had a funny little clump of four hairs that stuck out from her hip. She had marbling on her pawpads, too.

I love her wide vocabulary of very cute little meows, in contrast with Twigs’s more raucous ones. She reserved them for special occasions, opting to chirr most of the time.

I love how, when she was surprised by something, she would simply jump straight up in the air an inch, then come down. No other movement. It was like she was tweened. I never tried to spook her on purpose to see this, but she was a little prone to being spooked.

I love how, when she’d knead at a soft blanket, she did just a few quick little motions and then she was done. It was so dainty. I always called it kitty paws, to distinguish from cat paws.

I love how she’d do a straight upwards stretch that somehow made her ears flick inside out briefly.

I love the very deliberate way she tucked her paws, and how she would gently hold onto someone’s shoulders while getting a taxi ride. Everything she did came across as so purposeful.

I love how Ash had found that rubbing their face on Pearl’s side as a kitten would get her to purr, and that kept working for her whole life, and it’s basically what she ended up doing to people in return.

I love how she had a funny obsession with water. I can’t really explain it, and I don’t know what she found so interesting. If I took a swig from my water bottle with Pearl nearby, she would climb on whatever was necessary to sniff at the nozzle. If I opened a soda with Pearl nearby, she’d stick her nose right in the opening, then recoil when the bubbles fizzed her. She didn’t enjoy baths or anything, she just liked… water. From afar. Like with Napoleon, perhaps.

I love how she nuzzled so hard that she hit maximum nuzzle, and so she would also sort of gently swipe the air with her paw as well, for extra nuzzling power.

I love her funny “bug off” sweater, illustrated with a ladybug, which seemed to capture her personality well: don’t be rude to me, but expressed in a very cute manner.

I love how she adopted the sort of extended windowsill in our bathroom as her own, and would lay there on sunny days and roll around on a towel.

I love that she was pampered right to the end. Over the course of recent weeks, Ash would keep giving me updates on Pearl’s development of a new routine, where she would sit in a Treat Spot she had designated, possibly meow once or twice, and wait very nicely until Ash gave her a treat. And then Ash would eventually capitulate, helpful before the polite ministrations of this very tiny cat, and give her a treat. It seemed that the number of treats Pearl was managing to get per day was gradually increasing, and so I asked every time: why not simply not give her a treat? But I knew the answer.

If you cried, there were decent odds that Pearl would come and comfort you, come chirp at you and nuzzle until you felt better.

When we first moved here, Ash’s ex-husband had driven the truck containing all our stuff, and he slept here one night before leaving for good. The day after he’d left, we heard Pearl doing mouse alert in the room he’d slept in, and I just broke down sobbing at the kitchen table, thinking about how Pearl liked him despite everything and was just trying to find him, and we had no way to tell her he wasn’t coming back or explain any of it to her. To her, one of her favorite people had just disappeared, and that was so sad.

But Pearl heard me, came over, jumped on the kitchen table, and purred and headbutted me like crazy. The idea that I was sad for her and she still wanted to comfort me made me cry harder.

She would also headbutt and nuzzle Ash specifically on the mouth when they sang, or do the same to me if I whistled competently. I suppose she liked music, but only from us.

Most of all, I love… how much she doted on Ash. She slept alongside them (me only a few times), she followed them around, she waited outside doors for them. They were her favorite person. I feel so bad for them, to have lost both Twigs and Pearl back to back.

It’s been… two weeks now. Just over, because it took me another day to finish this post.

I don’t know if it’s fully clicked yet. I didn’t see Pearl much during the day, since she’d be tucked away in Ash’s office slash our bedroom. I saw her mostly at night and first thing in the morning. So while I’m out here, at my desk, it’s like nothing has changed. It only sinks in when I go upstairs and see the door left open, see a bed with no Pearl tucked in it somewhere.

It’s kind of dumbfounding just how much of this house and our lives had warped around Pearl, around this one tiny cat who loved everyone. So many things have disappeared or seem superfluous now. I was already free-feeding the other cats again since Pearl wasn’t allowed to roam the house unsupervised, but now we don’t need the kibble cage at all. Half our doors had been kept closed to make a few different places for Pearl to stay, but now none of that is necessary. Litterboxes had ended up scattered throughout the house so Pearl would always have access to one; now they’re back to being in a few central locations.

Ash doesn’t have to wake up at a specific time every day to give Pearl medicine. Pearl won’t wake us up to feed her. We don’t have to make her food, ever again.

And there are so many things that were only for Pearl. This wasn’t the case for anyone else. Styx only had communal cat sweaters; his favorite toy was loose change on my desk. Twigs, too, only had sweaters that Anise and Pearl inherited; his one dedicated toy was a single very tiny mouse he sometimes played with.

But Pearl? Half the sweaters we have only fit Pearl. Her mice were very much hers. Even her string was very much hers. We have a mortar and pestle that were specifically for grinding up her medication, oral syringes only Pearl used. She had possessions of her very own, things she’s left behind.

We knew this was coming, of course. Without the intervention of modern medicine, she would have died last March, and the outlook for heart failure in a cat isn’t great. I’ve already grieved for her several times over the past year. I didn’t see her much during the summer, but I’d been trying to spend more deliberate time with her in recent months, and I’m glad I did. I regret nothing. I earned her purrs, I played string with her exactly the right amount, I woke up to her stealing my pillow. I got the full Pearl experience.

And so did she. Ash took her outside extra over the summer, let her see a bit of the outside world (even if it was only our yard). We let her roam the house when we could, banishing Cheeseball to a room by himself if necessary, though she usually ended up sitting on a vent or my lap (or trying to heist some kibble). She got lots of treats, lots of love, lots of blankets, and even a vent all to herself. What more could she ask for?

She was living on borrowed time, but we borrowed every second we could. I don’t know what else we could’ve done. And we were there for her right up until the end. We didn’t have that opportunity with Twigs; he died in the back room, surrounded by strangers.

In the end, her heart was literally too big.

This sucks.

Pearl deserved better. She was dealt a bad hand from the beginning, but she was still friendly and kind, and then this happened. She was so young, too — her eighth birthday would’ve been next month. She, like Twigs, should’ve had twice as long.

Things won’t be difficult for her any more, I guess. I don’t know how much that comforts me.

Everything else moves on. Pearl continued until the night of January 11, 2022, but can go no further. We’re forced to leave her there, retaining only memories, while time carries us gently forward, ever further away.

So here is my landmark, my stake in the ground. Pearl was here. May this mark out the shape of who she was and leave that impression upon the world for much longer.

The finality of death resolves so many questions. I often wished I could improve Pearl’s tense relationships with Anise and Cheeseball, but now there’s no problem to solve. The interactions they had are all the interactions they will ever have. The tension is gone, now. The worries about how long Pearl’s heart will last are gone too.

The cat dynamic has shifted, again. Cheeseball and Napoleon have been much more affectionate towards Ash, and Napoleon has suddenly become a lap cat. I suppose the rest of the cats missed Ash while they were siloed away with Pearl for so long. Maybe they’re grieving? Cats are so open with their emotions, but sometimes they’re still inscrutable.

Pearl’s urn is on the dresser in our bedroom, right next to Twigs. Hers is bigger than his, somehow. But that’s Pearl for you — she always knew how to take up space.

No, this is too dire an ending. Pearl was dealt a bad hand, but she always tried to be nice despite that. She got to see a lot of places and make a lot of friends, both people and cats and even one dog. Even when she had complex and skeptical feelings about Anise, she kept trying to be friends with him. She faltered at times, but she always did her best to uphold her principles of loveliness, strong boundaries, and please give me a treat.

That’s a lot for a tiny cat. I admire her for it, and I will not forget it.

Pearl sitting contently next to Ash at their desk

Thank you for reading about Pearl. I hope you’ll remember her too. We loved her very much, and she put a lot of love back into the world. If you would like to experience more Pearl, here are some videos of her. I have some more to sift through, so this list may grow in the coming days.

And here are some games she has starred in. Or, rather, her fursona Purrl has starred in them.

Goodbye, Twigs

Post Syndicated from Eevee original https://eev.ee/blog/2019/10/26/goodbye-twigs/

Twigs lounging in a cat tree, while a bright sunbeam illuminates him from behind

I did not expect my return to writing to be like this.

Twigs, our nine-year-old sphynx cat, has died.

He is survived by Pearl, his lovely niece; Anise, his best friend and sparring partner; Cheeseball, his wrestling protégé; and Napoleon, his oldest and dearest friend.

Twigs was Ash’s¹ cat, more than I have ever known anyone to be anyone’s cat. He loved them so much. No matter where in the house they went to sit or lie down, Twigs was practically guaranteed to appear a short time later to insert himself into their lap.

¹ For those who’ve been following along for some time, Ash used to go by Mel.

If there was no room for him, or Ash rebuffed him for whatever reason, or if he was just in the mood, his backup plan was to sit somewhere else and keep an eye on them. Sometimes I’d be talking to Ash and catch sight of Twigs behind them, staring at them. Just watching. I’d tell Ash, and they’d turn around and giggle at him, and he’d keep on staring. Sometimes they played hide-and-seek with him, ducking out of sight and then peeking back out at him; he might still be staring, or he might have trotted over to see where they went. Or they could call out to him, just say his name, and he’d acknowledge them with a little meow and come over. They could summon him silently, too, with nothing more than eye contact and a particular nod.

Sometimes we’d be sitting apart and Twigs would sit on me instead, laying chest-to-chest against me. He’d play this ridiculous game where he’d nuzzle my chin a few times, then look at Ash for a moment before doing it again. As if to say, hey, look what you’re missing out on. Or maybe just to say he hadn’t forgotten about them.

Twigs liked to sit at the top of the cat tree in our dining room, right in the path of a huge sunbeam for much of the day, where he could watch Ash at their desk and also see most of the house. We got a huge beanbag over the summer and put it behind Ash’s desk, and Twigs spent a lot of time there as well. He did his own thing at times, certainly, but it was rare for a day to go by without Twigs trying to be close to Ash.

If Ash was inaccessible — in someone else’s bedroom with the door closed, or in the backyard, or even in the bathroom for too long — Twigs would sit at the objectionable door and yell for them. I can’t think of many other cat meow I’d describe as a yell, but that’s definitively what Twigs did. MYAOOOW? MYEHHHH! When Ash was out of town, I’d often hear him trotting up and down the upstairs hallway, yelling for them — until he gave up looking for the moment and came to snuggle with me, just as intensely, like I were the one he’d been looking for all along.

His favorite thing in the world was bedtime, when Ash would finally not be distracted by anything else, and he could lay with them all night. All the cats sleep with us to varying degrees, but Twigs was usually the first to show up. His arrival was so distinct: the quiet footsteps, the weight on the bed, and then the purr would start up before we could even see him. He’d spend all night with us most nights, laying on Ash’s chest in the classic Sphinx pose or curled up behind their knees under the blanket.

I loved how frequently he showed up already purring, apparently anticipating how good of a time he was about to have. It came across as this comical overconfidence, like he took for granted that of course he would be involved in whatever Ash was doing. But his purr, as common and subdued as it was, was such a deep and full and genuine rumble. He made me feel like I’d earned it, like I must’ve done something truly admirable to earn this level of praise. I always called it regal. The purr of a king.

In the early morning hours of October 13, early enough that it was still the previous night, Twigs came downstairs and yelled. That wasn’t unusual; he’d yell for Ash’s attention all the time. But then he lay on his stomach, angled straight up like the actual Sphinx, a pose he exclusively reserved for comfy places like laps and cat beds.

Ash and I went over to check him out, but we couldn’t find any tender spots, injuries, or other obvious problems. My best guess was a stomachache, which wasn’t unheard of for Twigs; perhaps laying on his stomach helped settle it? The room was a little chilly and he wasn’t wearing a sweater, so Ash wrapped him in a blanket and set him on the beanbag he liked, in the path of a heat lamp.

We went to bed only an hour or so later, and Ash carried Twigs with them. Without the heat lamp on him, he was noticeably cold to the touch now, and starting to stumble. I didn’t think of it until later, but as cold as he was, he never shivered once.

We rushed him to a 24/7 emergency vet.

His temperature was 92 when we arrived. Normal body temperature for cats is around 100.

They set about warming him up, rushed through some authorizations, drew some blood, told us results would come in about thirty minutes.

Twigs didn’t make it that long. At 4:26 in the morning, cold and confused, somewhere in a sterile room apart from everyone he’d ever known and loved, his heart stopped.

Only three or four hours had passed since he first showed any signs of distress whatsoever, and Twigs was gone.

Twigs was so expressive! He had so much personality, and he showed all of it. Sphynxes seem a little easier to read than furred cats, but… well, Pearl is a little reserved, and Anise is downright incomprehensible. Twigs was an open book.

Photos don’t quite do him justice, since cats are easiest to photograph when they’re relaxing. All of his body language and facial expressions felt really crisp and distinct, like he wanted you to know what he was thinking, but didn’t want to ham it up. How do I even explain this? How would I explain the faces a human makes, even?

His “I love sitting on you” face, his “I want to eat that” face, his “this is a bit annoying but I’ll put up with it” face… they were all so clear and distinct, moreso than any of our other cats, moreso than any cat I’ve met. He’d even turn up the corners of his mouth when he was really happy, making a little cat smile.

His eyes were huge and beautiful, and we got to see them a lot while he played sentinel, perched somewhere with a good field of view. They were different colors, too! Only slightly, but in the right light, one was distinctly greener and the other distinctly bluer. It was obvious from a glance at his eyes whether he was staring into space, watching you, wanting something from you, or wanting to come over to you.

He was always, always delighted when someone would pet him. I don’t think Twigs ever acted solitary; he stands out as the most readily and consistently affectionate cat we’ve had. He even had a specific expression for when he was in a good mood and wanted someone to pet him, which I called “bedroom eyes” — both because he lidded his eyes a bit, and because he mostly did it when laying in bed with us. If he was especially happy, he’d come lie on your chest, scoot forwards as far as he possibly could, and give you super nuzzles all over your chin.

Twigs had a very pettable head, too. Broad, with his ears more to the sides. I always said he had a cheese head, because it reminded me of a cheese wedge? For some reason? He had a good cheese head, perfect for kissing (“kitten kisses”), which he seemed to understand was a sign of affection. He loved having his head pet so much that he’d keep tilting his head further and further back, ostensibly to press harder against your hand — but if he was perched on the top level of a cat tree, that made it harder to reach the top of his head, so you’d have to do this silly little negotiation with him. It made his smile all the easier to see, though.

He had some other quirky little “tells” that seemed subtle, but that gave away what he’d almost certainly do next: hesitating in a particular way before inexplicably dashing away, or looking up and around at the ceiling before doing a big meow.

His meows! Twigs had a huge vocabulary, and so much of it was for asking politely for things. His “yell” for when he wanted Ash was big and boisterous, with a little characteristic warble to it, and he opened his mouth comically wide when he did it. If he wanted Ash’s steak scraps (which he loved), he had a very reserved meow for asking for them. If he couldn’t get under a blanket, he had a different reserved meow for asking for help. He was the only cat who regularly did that funny chirpy meow at bugs on the wall, though we hadn’t heard that one since we left the Seattle area — Vegas didn’t have nearly as many bugs.

When Anise would roughhouse a bit too hard, Twigs had a distinct pained meow for “this is too much” that would bring one of us running. I didn’t hear it much after we got Cheeseball, who acts as a more eager sparring partner for Anise, until one day I heard a distorted version of it — and I found Twigs and Cheeseball happily wrestling! Twigs came up with a new meow, ending on a happy note rather than a painful one, just for when he was playing with this new giant kitten friend.

One of the most frustrating parts of this is that it’s so hard to capture a cat’s meows, or a lot of other subtleties. As vocal as Twigs was, he still only spoke when he had something to say, and that was rarely when he was in front of a camera. I remember them so clearly now, but how can I convey them in text? Myehhh doesn’t really cut it. (I’ve been sorting through old cat videos, but it’s slow going; I’ll throw some of them up somewhere in the near future.)

I don’t understand what happened.

The test results only showed that he was severely anemic — he had far too few red blood cells, so he couldn’t warm himself or get enough oxygen. They didn’t explain how he’d reached that point in a matter of hours without showing milder symptoms first.

The day had been entirely normal. Twigs had been happy and active earlier in the afternoon. He wasn’t in the habit of chewing or eating strange things. We keep all our cats indoors, and the others are still fine, so he couldn’t have picked up a communicable illness. If he’d ever shown any sign that anything was wrong, I know with absolute certainty that Ash would’ve noticed, just as I immediately noticed when my cat Styx had lost weight. But there was nothing.

What, then, actually happened to him? I don’t know. I’ll never know. I briefly thought to ask for an autopsy, but at the time, I couldn’t bear the thought of what that would… mean.

No explanation, no reason, nothing to blame. Twigs was his healthy happy self all day, all week, all month, all year. Right up until he wasn’t. And then he died.

Twigs was so friendly. Kind, even. He never hurt anyone; he rarely did anything unexpected or rambunctious. He rarely even messed with things he shouldn’t, in sharp contrast to Anise, who tries to push my phone off my desk anytime he wants my attention; the most Twigs would do was gingerly tap something with a paw to see if it would react, then move on.

(Well, with one exception. If he found an unguarded glass of water, but the water level was too low for him to reach it, he was smart enough to tip the whole glass over and douse everything on your desk. We switched to reusable water bottles years ago.)

I can’t think of a single time Twigs was mean or angry or even wanted to be alone. All the cats have times they’re comfortable and don’t want to be disturbed, or just aren’t in the mood, or whatever — except Twigs.

If Ash scolded him (“Twigs!”), he’d dash off to a cat tree and scrabble at it briefly, taking his frustrations out with a few quick scratches and this funny little shimmy of his hips, then forget all about it. In extreme cases, he might run upstairs to our empty bedroom, yell once or twice, then come back down. Or in milder cases, when he couldn’t get something he wanted, he’d snort audibly and that was that. It was so, so charming — if he was upset, all he needed to do was go somewhere to yell about it for a moment, and then he was fine.

He was so patient, too. Ash put little costumes on him a few times, which he took in stride — well, for a cat, at least. He was always happy to be picked up, wrapped in clothing or a blanket, and/or held in all manner of silly positions. You could check his teeth and he’d hardly mind at all. Play with his ears, shake his paw, squish his lip, whatever; he was content just to be interacted with. (I suspect there was some mutual reinforcement between Ash doing goofy things to Twigs, and Twigs laying in increasingly obnoxious ways on Ash.)

He didn’t much like having his claws trimmed, and when Ash would do it, he used to bite the squishy part of their thumb — but not bite down, only put his teeth around their hand. Enough to communicate “I don’t like this” without trying to hurt them. Ash eventually started bribing him with cat treats every few claws, and then he disliked the process a bit less.

His good nature extended to the other cats, as well. He befriended every cat we’ve ever had! I didn’t really think about it until after he died, but if I ever saw two or more cats hanging out together, Twigs was almost guaranteed to be one of them. He was the binding force of our little cat sitcom.

There was one brief exception, when Ash first adopted Pearl — the first new cat since Twigs that was 100% Ash’s. They kept Pearl with them all the time at first, and Twigs got so jealous. Very early on he made his feelings very clear: he stood on the other side of the room, stared right at Ash (and Pearl), and made a huge meow at them. Then after like three days he found out that he and Pearl could both fit in Ash’s lap and everything was fine.

He’d cozy up with Anise or Pearl for warmth, and we’d often see all three of them nestled together, as though Twigs’s soothing presence deterred Anise and Pearl from their usual squabbling. He had an awkward but friendly relationship with Napoleon, the most aloof of the cats by far, who doesn’t show much affection towards any of the others except Pearl. I remember Napoleon used to refuse to groom Twigs anywhere but on the backs of his ears (the only place he had fur!), but after some years together, we started to see Napoleon grooming Twigs’s face and neck as well. For Napoleon, that was a really close friendship.

Twigs was even friends with Apollo, the German shepherd we used to have, who was much bigger than this tiny bald cat. I have a video of Twigs and Apollo playing, where Apollo is gently nudging Twigs around with his nose and Twigs alternates between nuzzling and lightly smacking Apollo. What a sweetheart. I don’t think any other cat interacted with Apollo quite like that.

He had a somewhat more complicated dynamic with Anise, who’s a good bit rowdier and more… destructive. Anise liked to start little brawls a lot, which wasn’t quite Twigs’s usual style, but he’d play along until Anise got too rough. (It probably didn’t help that Twigs would often respond by grabbing Anise by the sweater, which allowed Anise to wriggle backwards out of it and unleash his full powers.)

It’s been funny looking at older photos; when we first got Anise, Twigs was pristine, with maybe a scar or two on his haunch somewhere. (And all down the top of his tail, which he liked to nibble with some intensity.) At the end of his life, Twigs was riddled with little round scars from where Anise had bitten his back, and even a conspicuous dark spot right on top of his head. Who bites someone’s head?

I don’t remember his relationship with Styx as clearly, but I have enough photo evidence of it. The two of them were very close and spent a lot of time snuggled together, whether sleeping or just hanging out. We even got them matching pink sweaters! I’d forgotten that was deliberate. They played together, too, though much less seriously than Anise and on more “even” terms.

Six and a half years ago, my own cat Styx died. He’d been my cat, the way Twigs was Ash’s cat, sticking to me like glue the whole time I had him. But then Styx contracted a cruel and incurable illness, one that can strike even indoor cats and prefers to take the young. He wasted away over the course of a month.

I’d like to think that, whatever it was that took Twigs from us, maybe this swift departure saved him from the kind of long and excruciating ordeal that Styx went through.

I wrote his eulogy the day after he died. I avoided looking at it for years, but finally went back and read it a few days ago. It seemed so short! Was that really all I had to say about him? I knew him for over a year, yet I feel like I barely got to know him — I think Cheeseball is already older than Styx was when he died, and Cheeseball’s personality is still rapidly developing.

I was more shocked to find my own tweets from soon after Styx’s death, saying I couldn’t even look at photos of him. How long did that last? I don’t remember.

It hurt too much, so I avoided his memory, and now so much of it is a fragmented blur. Watching him deterioriate was gut-wrenching, and the worst part of his life — but it’s what I spilled the most ink on, and the part I need the least help remembering. Why did I write so much about that month? None of it was important in the end, yet I liveblogged every gratuitous medical detail. I guess I didn’t know what else to do, watching Styx wither away in my arms, while I couldn’t do anything about it.

I still cry for him, sometimes. I get a little sad over something else, and I remember Styx, and I cry. No matter how many of the details fade, I know I had a little cat named Styx who I loved dearly, and he loved me back.

This feels like a second chance, though. I won’t make the same mistake again.

It was hard to grieve with Ash all those years ago, back when things were so awkward. Now we can mourn together, and thinking about Twigs doesn’t sting the way thinking about Styx used to. It finally feels okay to remember Styx, too, and I’ve been rediscovering some old moments as I’ve sorted through photos in search of Twigs.

We’ve been celebrating and filling our space with both of them — we printed out physical copies of our favorite photo of each and put them in little thematic frames. Their pawprint casts are together on a shelf behind Ash’s desk. Nearby is Twigs’s urn, and I’d like to put Styx’s humble grave marker next to it, once I figure out where I packed it. Ash is painting portraits of them.

At my suggestion, we threw Twigs a little goodbye party — I baked a pumpkin cake (in honor of his homemade pumpkin cat food and the one fall he loved a tiny pumpkin), Ash decorated it, and we talked about Twigs and all the things about him that we miss. I insisted we wear party hats.

I’ve been taking notes on his life ever since he died, all so I could write this eulogy for him. It’s intimidating and even more difficult than I expected, trying to capture a life that meant so much to us in only a few thousand words. I hope I’m doing him justice. I want everyone to know how good Twigs was, and how much we’ve lost.

Twigs had his sassy side, but it was always sweet and harmless. Less like typical cat aloofness, more like that charming confidence of showing up to cuddle with his purr already in full swing, completely taking for granted that he was welcome and was about to enjoy himself. Or the similar energy he put on display when you were on a couch and he wanted to sit on you: he’d identify the most Twigs-shaped nook on your body and wedge his butt backwards into it, sometimes even hoisting himself with his front legs a bit, like a human settling into a recliner.

For example: if Twigs tried to approach Ash but Ash pushed him away — e.g., because they were eating or painting or their lap was occupied — then Twigs would often do a complete circle around the table or part of the room, only to approach Ash again from the other direction. It was so comical! So gentle and friendly, but cheerfully defiant about being near Ash. As if he couldn’t even imagine that he was disallowed for the moment. The problem must have been with his approach. There’s just no other rational explanation.

Since living in Colorado, we’ve occasionally come home and opened the front door only for Twigs to immediately dart outside… just so he could cross the front porch, stop at the nearest blade of grass, and bite it. None of the other cats have ever shown any interest in grass, but every once in a great while, Twigs would just get a hankering, and it’s the only reason he’s ever so much as attempted to leave the house. (Thank goodness.)

The thing that hit hardest right after he died was the feeding routine. Several of the cats eat storebought food, kept out of reach in a big dog cage we bought for this purpose, while Pearl and Twigs share homemade food. For the last couple months, whenever I went to go open the cage to let the other cats in, Twigs would trot along with them! He wouldn’t actually go in the cage, and he’d even slow down before getting to it (so the others would get ahead and it’d be easy to keep him out), but he acted like he belonged inside. It was such a perfect reflection of his personality: he went after something he wanted, yet he stopped short of breaking the rules.

Twigs knew how to have a good time, too. He loved rollin’ around on carpet. He’d wriggle on his back, grab the carpet with his claws and pull himself along it, and clearly be having the time of his life. Our Vegas home didn’t have any carpeted floors, but we added a little carpeted platform to the stairs (so the cats wouldn’t fall off!) and he had just as good a time on that. Later we got some small cat trees with singular round platforms, and those had a carpet texture he loved as well.

Rollin’ around would put Twigs in a feisty mood, and he’d reach out to smack anyone — cat, dog, or human — who came nearby. Ash would make a game out of this: they’d tap the floor nearby or the edge of the platform, then try to pull their hand away before Twigs “got” them. Sometimes Twigs would make a very riled-up face but not try to get you, and you could wind him up a little more by performing the “cat pat” — lightly and repeatedly tapping his haunch with your fingertips. You could watch him get more rowdy in real time, and then the game was to stop before he suddenly rolled over and tried to grab your hand.

Our home near Seattle was just up the street from a big park, and on a couple occasions, Ash took Twigs out for a walk on a little leash. On one such walk, while I was holding Twigs’s leash, he suddenly darted straight away from me and towards some underbrush! The leash caught him, of course, but he was running so fast that it actually yanked him right off the ground and flipped him over. (He was fine, albeit just as surprised as we were!)

(On another walk, Twigs stood right in front of Ash and made a huge myeehhhh up at them, clearly indicating that he was Done With Outside For Now. Poor baby. Ash picked him up, wrapped him in their sweatshirt, and held him until we got home. He really knew how to say exactly what he was thinking.)

Twigs played the typical cat games as well, when he felt like it — he might join in when we were playing string with Pearl, or teleport into the room when the laser pointer came out. One of the last things Twigs played with was a tiny mouse toy, ripped and with its stuffing pouring out. He sometimes liked to carry them around, roll around on the floor fighting them, then carry them somewhere else and do it again. He had a surprising ferocity with toys at times: wild eyes and incredibly quick pounces! It made me appreciate all the more how gentle he was with cats and people.

Once in a great while he’d play fetch, repeatedly bringing the same toy (or twist-tie or something) back to Ash’s feet so they could toss it and he could pounce it again. I even have an old video of Twigs playing chase: Ash would dash down the hallway, Twigs would dart after them with an intensely serious expression, Ash would yelp that Twigs “caught” them, and then they’d run down the hallway the other way. I don’t think any other cat we’ve had has really done that! They’ll run away from us, but not try to chase us around.

(Ash put fantasy “Luneko” versions of all our cats in NEON PHASE, a little game we made a few years ago, and I was struck by how Branch Commander Twig’s personality was so serious, when Twigs struck me as mostly lighthearted and friendly. But then, I suppose Twigs was very serious — about being lighthearted and friendly.)

I can’t tell what effect this has had on the other cats. They were all friendly with Twigs. Do they wonder where he is? Do they, too, assume he’s out of sight somewhere? Are they grieving? Will they grieve later?

The other cats got to saw Styx’s body, but Twigs died elsewhere. We have no way to tell them what happened to him. They just have to… guess? After living their whole lives with him? That sucks.

I think they’ve been more affectionate over the past week or so. Or they might be cuddling more because it’s getting colder. Or I might be paying more attention to them. Hard to say.

They do seem to be expanding their roles to fill Twigs’s niche. Napoleon, best known for spending almost all his time alone, has come and hung out on the couch — virtually unheard of. Anise and Cheeseball are, well, fighting each other instead of both fighting Twigs — but they’re starting fewer fights with Pearl. Pearl, who has had absolutely no tolerance for Anise since we left Vegas, has spent whole nights asleep next to him without making a fuss.

I guess they learned a lot from him.

Twigs was also fiercely loyal, but thankfully only had to show it a couple times.

We spent last summer in Marl’s parents’ unused (finished) basement, where they kept four cats of their own. (For a total of nine. We had quite a time.) One of them, Seamus, kept antagonizing our only furry cat, Napoleon.

We aren’t really sure how or why this started, but every so often, Seamus would start chasing Napoleon around, and Napoleon would scream. I don’t know why Napoleon was so scared of him, or what Seamus thought he was doing, or why he couldn’t understand that Napoleon didn’t like it. It was a constant source of stress for everyone; Seamus did it infrequently but seemingly on a whim, and we didn’t have many options for segregating the cats outright.

The incredible thing was, every time Seamus would start chasing Napoleon… Twigs would start chasing Seamus. And then Pearl would chase along with Twigs. And this would often end with Twigs and Pearl facing Seamus down, with Twigs saying some very nasty things that I will not repeat here.

(Anise would often show up and also run around, but he didn’t seem to understand why everyone was making such a fuss. While Twigs and Pearl were cornering Seamus, Anise would be standing next to them while mostly looking confused. Hey guys I see we’re playing chase!! I love chase too!! Oh why’d we all stop?)

I wouldn’t say it helped matters much, but it was strangely heartwarming. Twigs considered Napoleon his friend and had no problem telling this strange bully cat, a Maine Coon twice his size, to fuck right off.

Oh, but that’s nothing.

Apollo, that German shepherd we used to have, once somehow managed to knock down a whole set of shelves in Ash’s room. Ash, of course, yelled his name in response. They must’ve sounded really mad, because Twigs appeared instantly. He stood right in front of Apollo (separating him from Ash), in a very aggressive stance, making some very threatening growls and meows.

And he chased Apollo out of the room and right down the hallway.

All Twigs knew was that Apollo had seriously upset Ash, and that was that. No questions asked. This tiny little cat stood up to a giant wolf, because he thought Ash needed defending. Twigs was never aggressive or mean towards Apollo any other time, before or since. This only happened once, once ever, when Twigs thought Ash was in danger.

What a brave cat! If Apollo had wished Ash (or Twigs) harm, well, I don’t like those odds. But Twigs didn’t even think twice. We’ve never stopped marvelling over it.

I say “brave” very deliberately, because Twigs while was not fearless, he stood up to his fears. The only one we really saw was a fear of, ah, foam strips. See, we used to have a tiny “gym” in the corner of the kitchen, and the equipment sat on a foam mat made out of tiles with jigsaw edges that could fit together. To give the assembled mat a smooth perimeter, the tiles also came with thin edge pieces.

Foot traffic (or cats) could knock one of the edge pieces loose, leaving a strip of black foam alone on the floor. Twigs found this highly alarming. He would crouch down and eye it very suspiciously, creep up to give it a light smack and then back off, and generally treat it like a live wire. We assume it looked like a snake to him, though no other cat took interest in the edge pieces except to play with them, and Twigs never reacted the same way to anything else snake-shaped.

But he didn’t run away. He investigated, to see if it was dangerous, see if there was a predator in his home. Even after we’d find him doing this and put the foam piece back, Twigs would creep around for a while, looking for possible snakes until he was convinced it was gone. He was clearly very wary, yet he never ran, never hid.

The only other times I recall seeing Twigs anything close to scared were when he encountered a couple of accessories that resembled large animals: a Lucario hat Ash bought many years ago, and one of those goofy horse masks. I’m not even sure if “scared” is even the right word; he looked more annoyed? He neither backed down nor tried to attack them. I only remember him standing his ground and hissing, warning them to leave him alone.

I never heard him hiss any other time.

(Ash did, though. Once as a tiny kitten, our late cat Granite sat on him. A big furry cat just sat his ass right down on this little kitten. Kitten Twigs hissed about this, but kittens aren’t very ferocious hissers, so it came out khh! khh!, which Granite ignored.Funnily enough, once Twigs grew up, he developed his own habit of sitting on furred cats!)

We haven’t had a death since Styx. Twigs’s best friend! I never once expected Twigs would be the next to go. Now Napoleon is the only one left of the original crew.

Ash moved in with me not long after adopting Twigs. I don’t think he was even a year old. I knew him his entire adult life! I lived with him longer than I’ve lived with anyone, save my parents as a kid.

For so many years, it’s been Ash and Twigs. The inseparable duo, joined at the hip. I knew it would end someday, but I was so sure that day was much further off. I thought he’d be around for another five years at least, and secretly hoped he’d make it another ten. But we only got half of that. He loved twice as hard, and his heart burned out far too early.

He had so much life left in him. He played, he ran around, he wrestled (or, at least, was wrestled upon). He was still growing, inventing new antics and new ways to interact with us.

It’s been a strange experience. I couldn’t even absorb the factual knowledge of his death at first, even as I spent much of the first few days crying. How could Twigs die? That doesn’t make any sense; I haven’t seen him yet today, but he’ll show up soon. But I feel really sad. Oh, right, that’s because Twigs died. Rinse, repeat, over and over.

We picked his ashes a few days later. It’s been nice to have him home again, and it helps to have something physical to look at, rather than just the lack of his presence. Ash intends to paint his urn.

It got easier much more quickly than I expected, and that’s been weird as well. I wanted to hold onto his memory and be happy for the time I got to spend with him, and then that actually happened. I think about him a lot (especially over the multiple days it’s taken to write this), and a lot of little things remind me of him, but they don’t make me break down in tears. Usually.

That feels a little bad. But I know that hurting less doesn’t mean I loved him any less. And I know the last thing Twigs would want is for us to be sad.

Twigs was the best. I miss so much about him. I miss the way his whole nose scrunched up when he did a big meow. I miss his distinct little trot as he came down the hallway to see you. I miss watching him do eager little circles on the floor as I got the food out. I miss how he’d smack his lips as he showed up, a distinct and inexplicable quirk I’ve never seen in any other cat, a good compliment to how long he’d spend licking his chops after eating. I miss his huge ears! I miss “savannah cat” — when he’d hook his paws over the edge of something he was lying on, like an arm or the edge of a cat bed or the corner of my computer tower. I miss what a serene and calming presence he was.

It’s funny how some of the most memorable moments are things he only did one time. He joined Ash in the bathtub once — they were reading a book and Twigs came in, hopped in the bath, and sat in water up to his neck, just to be with them. He often announced his presence with a questioning meow when coming into Ash’s Vegas room at night, and once he did this really funny “meow-ow!” kind of double meow, and we’ve repeated it to each other as a nod to Twigs ever since, even though he never did it again.

One fall, we got a tiny pumpkin — the size of a slightly disappointing donut — and Twigs was enamored with it. We’d roll it along its edge and he’d chase after it and keep biting it, and it was so cute. Another fall, we bought another one, and Twigs wasn’t interested in it at all. Very cutting-edge of him. Tiny pumpkin is so last year.

He used to be really interested in eggs, too. For a while, we couldn’t turn our backs on an egg on the counter, because Twigs would materialize and start gently batting it around. Then he lost interest.

I miss how he slept with me. He’d always slept either behind my knees or on top of the covers, but right towards the end of his life, he invented a new trick, just for me. I sleep on my side, so he couldn’t lay on my chest; instead, he went under the covers, poked his head out, and lay against my chest with his head on my pillow. Like a little person! It was so sweet. He’d then keep nuzzling my face with his cold wet nose, which was kind of annoying. I miss that, too.

Even the annoying things are conspicuously absent. He frequently stepped on my hair while I was in bed, trying to get around me to get to Ash, and wow that is painful. Twigs groomed his cat sweaters more intensely than any other cat, biting the fabric and pulling so hard that it stretched and made this horrible high-pitched squeak, like nails on a chalkboard. He loved to groom people, too — usually on the chin or upper chest, since that’s what was accessible when he lay on you. Somehow Ash got used to it (and learned to redirect him to their palm, which he’d lick for ages), but I could never bear more than a few seconds of his cheese grater tongue.

What a good cat.

I felt like I’d been waiting for this all year. I don’t want to go much into it, but death has felt like a looming spectre almost since we moved in. The pointlessness of doing things, the feeling that I’m just passing time waiting to die, the occasional intrusive thought about a tragic accident befalling one of us or one of the cats. Never Twigs, though.

Last year was harder on me than I thought. I fired on all cylinders, trying to get Ash back on their feet, and once that happened… I deflated and never quite recovered. I lost a lot of my drive, my spark, my voice. I got frustrated with difficult work much more easily. I stopped writing. I stopped interacting. I stopped trying.

I didn’t even realize. Even as I felt increasingly distant and detached from the universe, I still thought I’d been pretty normal all year with only a few rough patches. It’s been hard to compare the past to the present, separated as they are by a strange and tumultuous six months that changed almost everything. Then Ash commented that I’d seemed kind of down all year. What a jolt that was, and only a few days before Twigs died.

Twigs’s death feels like a kick in the ass. I’ve felt a lot of despair over the past year, but all of it has been tied to anxieties and what-ifs — imaginary things. But this is sad, which is very different. This carries a pain for something tangible, something real, something important, something I want to hold onto. How can any of my little fantasy fears matter, when the loss of a cat outweighs all of them combined?

I don’t want to waste any more time. I want to reflect what I admired about Twigs: kind, patient, confident, and loving. I want to make this mean something.

Twigs had a good life. He spent it around people and cats he loved dearly, and who loved him right back. He had friends when he was lonely and blankets when he was chilly.

Oh, did he ever love blankets. Sphynxes are naked and tend to seek out warmth, of course, but of the four we’ve had, Twigs was by far the one who treated heat sources like a passion rather than mere physical comfort. His ability to identify the most snuggly spot to back his ass into was nothing short of superfeline. Sometimes he’d toast himself so well that he turned a little pink! And he used to do this incredible display of cat paws, with all four paws, accompanied by the occasional meow — but only on a specific blanket that we’ve long since lost.

He was also the one who tolerated cat sweaters the best (despite inflicting the most destruction on them). Anise’s powers of antagonism are greatly reduced in a sweater, and he will run away if he sees you approaching him with one; Pearl still does a funny awkward walk with her back half lower to the ground, even after wearing them through half a dozen winters. But Twigs in a sweater just acted like Twigs.

And what a well-travelled cat! He lived in four states and drove through half a dozen others. That’s more of the world than a decent number of humans see. He got to meet and snuggle with all kinds of other cats, and even some sort of giant wolf-cat who tried to herd him occasionally. He got to see the great outdoors, then decided he didn’t like it and returned to the great indoors.

Twigs did spend a couple of his later years afflicted with “pillow paw” — his pawpads swelled up one day, for seemingly no reason. Our vet couldn’t find an underlying cause, and meanwhile it was uncomfortable for him to land on his feet from a height. Poor guy. I’m eternally grateful to the vet we found last summer, who finally solved the mystery and cured him. He got to spend his final year active and unhindered again.

Ash spent much of our last couple Vegas years secluded in their office, too, so Twigs didn’t get as much face time as I’m sure he would’ve liked. But in our new place, both of our desks are out in the open and right next to each other, so Twigs could see them whenever he wanted. Sometimes he lay on a cat bed on my desk watching them, or strolled back and forth between us both, purring up a storm.

It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster for all of us, but I think the last year was the best year of his life.

I miss Twigs, but I smile when I think about him. He made us so happy while he was here.

Twigs came into Ash’s life while they were somewhat adrift — no clear goals, no home of their own, resigned to an unhappy marriage. He stuck with them for nine whole years, unwavering in his affection. He followed them down into the darkness, down where they couldn’t feel love from anyone — anyone except Twigs.

Now Ash has work and a community they love. We have a home together, and it finally feels like one. And by sheer coincidence, Ash’s divorce was finalized mere days after Twigs died. His entire life was contained within that marriage, from birth to death.

(Oh, we’re married now. Hurrah.)

Ash adopted Twigs almost on a whim, and he left us just as abruptly. As though he’d only shown up in the first place to help Ash when they needed it, and with Marl finally out of our lives, his work here was done.

The last thing Twigs did, the night that he died, was tell us he loved us. Ash put him under the blanket to try warming him up, and at first he was by our feet… but then he crawled up to slump against me, similar to how he did when I was alone in bed, and then he climbed on Ash’s chest and lay on them for a moment. Right at the end, as cold and confused as he must’ve felt, all he wanted was to be with Ash, to be with both of us.

I don’t know where Twigs is, now. He might be nowhere. But the universe has consistently proven itself to be more baffling and beautiful than I expect, so I’ll hold out hope that he’s somewhere — somewhere he can once again see Styx, his (other) best friend in the whole wide world. Somewhere that we can see them both again, one day.

Goodbye, Twigs! We’ll always love you, and we’ll always miss you.

Thank you, so much, for everything.

A colorful and abstract painting of Twigs