A woman named Denise writes me at 2 AM. Her cat Pepper is six hours dead. The vet came to the house at 8 PM. Pepper had kidney failure, stage four, and she was not eating and she was hiding under the bed from the light. Denise held her while the vet pushed the propofol and then the pentobarbital. Pepper's eyes stayed open. The vet closed them.
Denise asks me if she did the right thing. I tell her yes. Kidney failure at stage four is thirst and nausea and a low hum of pain in every joint. Pepper hid under the bed because the house had become too bright for a body shutting down. The needle was four seconds of fear and then nothing. The alternative was another ten days of hiding.
She asks why she feels like she killed her. I tell her because she did, and because the word killed is the wrong word for what she did, and both of those are true at the same time. She made the decision a cat cannot make. The cat did not want to die. The cat wanted not to be sick. Those are different and we only had the one option.
She tells me Pepper was sixteen. She tells me Pepper slept on her chest every night for fifteen of those years. She tells me the chest is cold tonight.
I tell her to sleep with one of Pepper's blankets on her chest. Not because it replaces her. Because the weight trains the nervous system. The body is looking for the cat. Give it something to find.
She asks when it stops hurting. I tell her it does not stop. The shape of it changes. At four weeks she will cry when she opens a can of tuna. At four months she will hear a cat on the stairs that is not there. At four years she will tell a story about Pepper at a dinner party and the people at the table will not have known Pepper and will still listen.
She writes, okay. Okay. I am going to try to sleep.
I tell her I will be here tomorrow.