Requiem

Five years ago, Aaron and I spent the weekend before my birthday moving from our cramped, cricket-infested apartment into a sprawling century-old farmhouse. To mark the occasion, we bought a wooden swing for our front porch; and when the swing cracked two days later, we returned it to the store and decided to get a kitten instead.

At the animal adoption center, we chose the tiniest and feistiest in a litter of tiny, feisty grey-striped kitties, a cuddly, curious fluffball who curled up in my cupped hands. We brought her back to our farmhouse and watched her explore her new home, and we decided we had never seen anything so tiny or lovable or perfect. We summoned all the irony available to our twenty-something years and named her Monster.

Monster played fetch with golf-ball-sized Nerfs and balled-up Hershey's Kiss wrappers. She dug the leftover twine from our new window blinds out of the trash and would chirp us awake in the middle of the night to play with her. She settled the quintessential toilet seat argument once and for all by falling into the toilet whenever we left the lid up. She loved to snuggle on our laps while we watched tv, and knead our legs with her tiny paws; she kneaded whenever she was content, even if she was sleeping - even if she was lying on the floor, or on her back; she kneaded the air.

And then, a few weeks after we got her, we found out about my other birthday present: One of Aaron's MightySperm had swum to victory in early August, and we were expecting a baby person.

I feel slightly ridiculous, now, remembering how guilty I felt about Monster's having to give up her position as our Number One Baby; I blame hormones. I wept when we had her declawed, a decision we made for the baby's sake but which left me feeling as though I was somehow playing favorites (and as though this were a bad thing). Of course when David was born that all changed, of course; once we had a baby to take care of, a tiny human person to raise and nurture, our kiki was demoted from family member to family pet, where she belonged. But she was still our first baby.

She didn't take her demotion well. While she was still sweet and loving to me and Aaron, and mostly ignored David, she began acting hostile to any guests who came to our house. She wasn't a typical scaredy-cat, hiding under furniture until our company had left; no, she'd rub against their legs, lulling them into a false sense of security, then hiss and bite their hands when they reached to pet her. Our families rechristened her Jerkface and didn't believe us when we maintained that she was cuddly and affectionate when no one was around, and that she was (fairly) patient with the kids.

In five years, she ballooned from itsy-bitsy kitty to twelve-pound cat. We switched her to high-protein, low-fat food to try to help her lose weight. In the evenings, after the kids were in bed, she'd stretch out on her back on the living-room floor and wait for Aaron and me to offer her bites of whatever snack we were eating in front of the tv. She insisted that she was entitled to the milk left in our bowls after we ate cereal, and to the last few bites of our ice cream. She followed us to the bathroom so she could drink out of the faucet. She may not have been a family member, but she was an established part of our lives, of our comfortable routine.

And then, a week or so ago, Aaron and I compared notes and realized that it had been several days since either of us had refilled her food dish. We remarked that she'd been much more laid-back lately, spending most of her time stretched out on the floor of the upstairs hallway. And as we looked at her more closely, we noticed how much thinner her stomach looked, how it dipped in behind her rib cage. We noticed that we could feel her spine more sharply when we stroked her back. And we noticed that her chest was rising and falling dramatically with each breath she took.

On Monday, I took her to the vet, one of Aaron's high school classmates that we reconnected with at the reunion. I hoped he would say, She's just being sulky, try playing with her more. Instead he said, This doesn't look good. He ordered x-rays and blood work. He showed me the x-ray, the huge pool of fluid that was filling her chest cavity and crowding her lungs. He showed me the odd angle her windpipe had been forced into, told me how much work she's doing just to breathe.

Suffering, he said. Cancer, virus, heart disease. Euthanasia. I'm sorry.

He drained some of the fluid and sent her home with a bottle of pills to help keep the fluid from building back up so quickly. We made an appointment to come back next week so he can see how she's doing. If she starts eating again, he said, and if she's breathing okay, we may not have to put her to sleep right away.

But she's still not eating. She spends most of her time now in the basement, curled up in the laundry sink. Her chest isn't heaving quite so much, but we can see that she's still laboring to breathe. She's hunkering, waiting for death. And we have to let her go.

She may not completely be family. But I'm going to miss her like crazy.