Goodbye and Hello

Losing a beloved pet and beginning a new chapter with another

I spent the last weekend of October in a small town in western Virginia with three friends for our annual peak-leaf-viewing getaway. 

The second night we were there, I had just poured myself (another) beer when I was called to the phone. As I walked over to take the call, I wondered who needed to speak to me at 10 p.m. 

It turned out to be my friend Kelly. She was very upset.

“Susie, Stuey died!”

My mind went blank.

“What?”

Since 2020, Kelly and I have had an unusual cat-sharing arrangement. She had wanted to adopt a cat but was concerned about her busy travel schedule; I had also wanted a cat, but my son, who was still living with me at the time, was allergic, so it would be hard to have a pet full-time. 

I suggested that Kelly get a cat, and volunteered to be the permanent, free pet sitter whenever she was out of town. She adopted a kitten named Stuey, and we had been happily co-parenting for the last five years, with Stuey splitting his time evenly between our two houses. 

But now Kelly was calling to tell me that the young woman staying with Stuey at Kelly’s house for the weekend (we were both out of town) had come home from dinner and found Stuey lifeless on the kitchen floor. He was gone.

Stuey’s death didn’t make any sense to me; he was only five. We later learned from the vet that he likely had HCM, a heart condition in young cats that usually goes unnoticed and can take them suddenly and without warning. 

It was too late for either of us to drive home that night. Kelly’s next-door neighbor went over to help our cat sitter and put Stuey in a box in the living room.

I immediately began trying to digest the devastating news. As I talked with my friends, who all knew and loved Stuey, I heard myself saying things like “Well, he had a great life” and “I guess he was only meant to live for five years. I’m still glad we had him.” 

It wasn’t until I went to bed a couple of hours later and started scrolling through the 1,923 pictures of him on my phone that the tears welled up as the loss began to sink in.

Dozens of pictures reminded me of his personality.

The next morning, I met Kelly outside of her house as she returned from her weekend destination, and we walked inside together. 

You find out a lot about yourself in moments like this.

I adored Stuey, but didn’t want to see him. He had been dead and in a box for more than 12 hours, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get that image out of my mind. I didn’t want to remember him that way.

Kelly did want to see him, and she said goodbye to him in her living room as I waited in another room. Then she moved him into the carrier we had used to transport him between our houses. Together, we were going to take him to the vet, whose office was only a mile away.

I offered to drive. When she suggested putting Stuey in the front seat, where he had always travelled, my spine stiffened, but I reluctantly agreed. 

The sides of the carrier are mesh. As I walked around to the driver’s side of the car, I flashed back to all of the times I had picked the cat up at her house and baby-talked to him as I drove him back to my place. Now he would be sitting in the same position, dead.

I pictured myself driving to the vet with my head out the window, trying not to feel sick to my stomach. I was wishing I could crank my head up and sideways out the window, so it was completely outside the car. Just as I was taking a deep breath and trying to steel myself for the drive next to my fallen soldier, Kelly saved me. 

“Or do you think it would be better to put him in the back seat?”

“Yes,” I garbled, “I think that would be best.” And then I promptly rolled down all of the windows. 

When we got to the vet, Kelly went inside to handle the paperwork, and Stuey remained in the back seat. I got out and stood next to the car in the parking lot, providing as much company and protection as I could. 

“Do you want to come in?” Kelly asked when she came out to the parking lot to get the cat. The vet was going to provide a room for a goodbye. I told her I would come into the office with her, but not the goodbye room.

Even in that moment, it struck me as weird that I could love an animal so much and want as little to do with the end arrangements as possible. 

Why would I rather gnaw my hand off than face a dead cat? I wasn’t sure what that said about me, but I didn’t feel proud of how I was responding.

After we left the vet’s office, we went to Kelly’s house and spent some time reminiscing about Stuey. Then I went home. Even though it had been a couple of weeks since he had stayed with me, the house felt empty when I walked in. Quiet. Still. 

I spent the rest of the day on the couch in a haze. It still didn’t even make sense. Stuey was so young. He was generally very healthy, except for being overweight. (But who isn’t?)

I eventually contacted people in my life to let them know. I phoned my son, who was shocked and sad, but also relieved to hear that I wasn’t calling about a human relative. 

About an hour after we talked, he texted a handful of pictures he had taken of Stuey that I had never seen. 

“I’m sorry, Mom,” he wrote, “I know he kept you company.” 

And that was just it. The cat kept me company. 

I’ve always heard that pets are especially good for old people and for people who live alone, and that was certainly the case for me. Even though the cat was only with me part of the time, and I wasn’t even his official owner, like most pets, it felt like he was part of the family. 

Before Stuey came along, it had been more than 20 years since I had had a pet. Now it felt like there was a gaping hole in my life.

In the weeks after he was gone, I thought a lot about Stuey, and also about the arrangement of essentially sharing a pet with Kelly. It had worked out so well. When either one of us was out of town, with very few exceptions, the other person was around. And it was just fun to raise an animal in a little village. I hoped she would be interested in adopting another cat together and was happy to learn that she was. 

We didn’t talk about timing. I know we both wondered how long we should appropriately remain in mourning before getting another cat. We were both really sad about Stuey, and neither of us wanted to be disrespectful to him by “replacing” him too quickly, if that were even possible. 

A couple of weeks later, there was a cat adoption event near us, and Kelly asked if I wanted to go, just to start looking. I was on board. 

The weeks without Stuey had coincided with the beginning of November, which is typically a low time of year for me because of the diminishing light and shorter days. The idea of starting the process of bringing life back into the house made me feel hopeful.

On the day of the event, as we were getting out of the car at the pet shelter, we agreed again that we would not be getting a cat that day. We were just dipping a toe back into the pool.

An hour and a half later, we came out with a kitten, a soft, seven-month-old tabby cat who likes to play and who purrs loudly. He’s a Mackerel tabby, we were told, so we settled on Mackie as a name. 

He has adjusted quickly to life at both houses, doing lots of inspecting, pushing things onto the floor, and finding the best places to take naps. It’s been great to have a furry friend around the house again.

I’m glad we didn’t wait any longer to get our new guy, because waiting wouldn’t have changed how I feel about Stuey. I still have 1,923 pictures of him on my phone, and no one will ever replace him.