Juno.

I originally wrote this blog post in September of 2020—my best friend Morgan had just been diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer, and my soul cat’s health began to drastically decline.

“This is the perfect topic to write about right now because grief is the only emotion I’ve felt for the past three months. Sometimes I have glimpses of light, but they’re quickly snuffed out by anger, all-encompassing sadness, confusion, uncertainty, and a pain that cuts so deep it hurts to breathe.

I have never dealt firsthand with death, and now it’s all around me.

On September 26th, 2020, we had to put my cat down. In the days prior, I knew it would be hard, but I couldn’t even begin to comprehend the insurmountable amount of loss I would feel.

She was my birthday cat.

We found her as a stray, on death’s doorstep, outside our apartment building in 2016. She lit up when I approached her. She was my absolute favorite kind of cat—long-haired, large and in charge, with a face so flat and beautiful. She chirped, and I noticed she was front-declawed, which caused me to huff and puff that someone had abandoned her outside defenseless.

I took her to the vet a couple of days later and they found her microchip. Her prior owners never claimed her, so without a doubt, she was mine.

She didn’t come without problems.

She hated other animals. She shit on the floor—not always, but often enough for it to be an inconvenience. She hated traveling in the car. We moved four times with her in our possession. She puked up hairballs at least once a week.

But she was so worth it.

Around February of that year, the same time my best friend was re-diagnosed with cancer, I noticed she had started puking almost daily. I took her weight and she had dropped from 14 to 10 pounds over the course of a month, so I took her to the vet. They ran a senior cat panel—she was almost 13—and discovered the beginning of liver failure and a lowered white blood cell count.

The vet gave me anti-nausea pills to give her and recommended a couple of different foods to try. If she didn’t improve, they wanted me to bring her back in, but for the most part, she was otherwise healthy.

Ever since we had gotten our second cat a year and some change prior, Juno had started exhibiting many signs of stress, but she had always ruled the roost since our other cat was submissive to her. However, that didn’t stop the behavior changes: resource guarding around food, nervousness, and general irritability.

At times, we were all stressed, but in the end, we made it work. We had done the proper slow introduction. They had separate litter boxes and food bowls. They had separate territory in our house. I was constantly doing everything I could to make sure both cats were as appeased as possible.

Months later, Juno had quit losing weight but began eating four or five cans of cat food a day. Sometimes she would throw up. She could no longer stomach dry kibble, so both cats were changed to a wet-food-only diet, which was supposed to help maintain hydration and provide higher nutritional value.

And then Juno began eliminating on the floor daily.

It almost became a sick inside joke between my husband and me because every day I would wake up hoping it wouldn’t happen. I would return from work hoping it didn’t happen. I would fall asleep anxiously praying that she could get her shit together—literally.

But toward the end, it was one of the only constants we had left.

On top of that, she developed nighttime dementia, and for two months we couldn’t sleep without her beating at our door, yowling in what I now think was pain. She would jump up and down off our bed and continuously stir us from sleep, hoping we would feed her again, even if she had just eaten. She would steal our other cat’s food, so we had to start completely separating their meal times.

I tried reaching out to our vet, but in the height of COVID, it was hard to get answers. She wouldn’t let me medicate her, and overall, I wrestled day and night for a few weeks trying to decide what to do.

What a miserable life we were all living.

I look back at all 500 pictures and videos I have of her.

I miss smelling her soft mullet. She smelled like cocoa butter.

I miss gazing into her beautiful greenish-turquoise jelly eyes and seeing the entire universe.

I miss feeling so unconditionally loved, because I had her when I had no one and nothing else.

I miss her turkey form, her sploot form, her razzle-dazzle peats, her periscope tail, her chirps and purrs, her headbutts, her soft long brown fur, and her perfect triangle ears.

I miss how hungry she was for hands.

I miss laying my head on her like a pillow because she was so flat and warm.

I miss her following me around everywhere and being loud in her own way, even when it was annoying.

I miss her sleeping on my pillow to keep my head safe.

In the final days, I was in the bathroom with her, and I looked at her cloudy eyes and dulling coat. I listened to her sharp meows. She was beginning to struggle to settle, and something always seemed off.

I contacted a hospice vet who could come to our home to euthanize her.

I continued to wrestle with wondering if I was robbing her of another seven or so years. I wondered if there was a treatment, and how much it would cost. I thought of our other cat, and our soon-to-be puppy, and just how ornery she was.

I thought about our lack of sleep, and the absolute frustration I was beginning to almost always feel with her.

That frightened me because she was my little granny.

I loved her, but she made me so mad.

I was mad that she couldn’t just stop the behaviors and get better.

My husband grew numb to my back-and-forth and told me it was up to me to decide. Whether we kept her alive and practiced management and maintenance, or I decided on a “mercy kill” for the greater good of our family.

I cried for two weeks straight, crumpling under the burden of being an executioner.

The hospice vet didn’t guilt me or argue with me for more treatment. My vet months prior had made it seem like I didn’t love my cat if I wasn’t willing to pour thousands into diagnostics and treatments.

My husband pointed out how she would’ve been dead four years ago if we hadn’t brought her into our home. He said that we, particularly I, had gone above and beyond to give her a life of luxury.

A giant litter box. Delicious high-end food. A cat fountain. Tons of snuggles and soft places to rest.

I had fulfilled extending her life to the best of my ability.

So I set a date for euthanasia, and everything continued on the same.

A couple of days prior, the clinic called me with a walkthrough of what to expect and to collect payment. Due to COVID, having a vet visit your house would look a lot different than normal, but it would still be better than taking her to a vet’s office where they would take her from me and she would die alone, or we would have to put her to sleep out on the lawn in front of God and the world with no privacy.

I wanted her to have dignity and peace, leaving earthside in a place she was comfortable and felt safe.

I broke down in tears after I got off the call.

The day of, I woke up at 8 a.m. The procedure was at 11.

I didn’t want to have too much time where I could sit anxiously waiting for the reaper to come.

She carried on as normal, sweet as can be. I held her and cried, and she did as she always did—sent me healing vibrations that only she could provide.

11 approached, and my husband became irritable, thinking the lady wouldn’t arrive on time.

But then she did.

She pulled into our driveway with her purple-and-white company van with big words on the side. I felt a bit awkward and hopeful that we could still maintain privacy even though she technically couldn’t come into our home.

This lady was meant for this job because she was so tender and kind and patient.

She told me we would give Juno a sleep shot first to relax her.

Juno approached the door so happily. She loved people.

My stomach lurched.

She had no idea what was happening, and she was just so pure and so good.

I had my husband hold her for the first shot because I just—couldn’t.

I played a few soft songs on the TV while we sat with her for about 10 minutes on our couch. Her eyes began to look sunken, and she was already so limp. I processed the fact that I would never see her with her jelly eyes and alert ears ever again.

It was too late to go back.

My husband later pointed out that this was probably the first time in a very long time that she wasn’t in any pain.

We then took her to the garage, and since Juno didn’t have a favorite blanket or bed, the vet told us we could take her to the backyard, since it was a beautiful sunny day, and hold onto her for the final part of the procedure.

I took a chair out back and stifled tears and sobs.

My husband sat in the chair with her and maintained a stoicism and level of calm rigidity that I could’ve never mustered.

The lady let us know that with the next shot, Juno might eliminate her waste, and that it may take up to five minutes for her to be fully gone.

We were all wearing masks, but I watched my husband’s eyes widen in horror when the shot was administered.

I asked him later if he could feel her dying.

He could.

And I was reassured that I had made the right choice not to be the one holding her. It would’ve destroyed me.

I pet her and kissed her and apologized while we waited.

It wound up taking almost 20 minutes for her heart to fully stop.

The vet was very kind and patient, and reassured us that it was likely Juno had a tumor that was stealing a lot of her blood supply, causing the medicine to take longer to take effect.

She then took her and put her in a basket, and I stared at how limp she was, and how cold, and how…empty.

She told us to take the basket in for our other cat to smell so she would know that Juno was gone and wouldn’t be coming back.

I was honestly super wigged out because I had to watch my living cat sniff my ghost cat, and watch the panic spread across her face as she ran away to hide.

The vet then met us back in front of our house, and she let me kiss Juno without my mask on.

She took her paw and made a little mold print of it. She laughed about all her extra toes and remarked on what a beautiful cat she truly was, and how “lots of people say they have a Maine Coon, but I think you had the real deal.”

She then took her away to be cremated, and I would later have her ashes made into a necklace.

Juno is my first ancestor.

Nothing comforts me more than knowing that she exists in the ether around me.

But goddamn, do I miss her.

And I thought it would get easier, but I had never felt that kind of pain.

Because the pain of loss can’t be fixed like normal pain. There’s no way to bring the dead back.

Grief is one of the hardest things I’ve had to face because I’ve done it mostly alone.

My husband pushed Juno so deep down that I don’t think he processed her departure at all—because he said it makes him sad to think about it.

I never had the option of letting go, or forgetting, or moving on.

This is a part of me now, and I feel robbed that I outlived her and that we’ll never have a picture together again.

I feel angry that people can be like, “It’s just a cat.”

I feel angry that with Juno’s death, it dominoed me into thinking about my best friend’s death, and that no one is sitting with me in processing that.

I’m disgusted that love causes this much pain, and that we all will die alone in some capacity.

I never wanted to love like that again, but that’s a part of being alive and being a part of the human experience.

I am so very thankful that she chose me.

I am so very grateful that we had those four years together, even though it wasn’t long enough.

And I just hope one day I can breathe again.”