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. 

If you’ve ever sat through an online meeting and learned after the fact that your microphone was on, you know that feeling of horror. It’s especially terrible when your boss is speaking to you and more than 60 of your coworkers and you learn that you have just interrupted the discussion by yelling, “Hey! Hey! Keep it moving!” 

This was what happened to me a few weeks ago during a virtual faculty meeting. My cat walked across my keyboard and turned on my microphone. I’m still not sure which key he stepped on, but it isn’t the first time he’s discovered things about my laptop that I was unaware of.  (Who knew it had airplane mode?)

To let the cat know that this was wrong behavior, I shouted and quickly scooted him off the keyboard before adding (loudly), “Not on my computer!”

It didn’t take long for my work friends to start blowing up my phone. The first message I received is below. Mercifully, the assistant principal (a cat owner herself, as it turns out) immediately muted me, so the only comments that went public were brief. I’m told there was an awkward silence after my outburst and then my principal continued on with his remarks.

The next day I was in school laughing about the event with a coworker before things got awkward again.

“Your cat is so funny!” she told me.

“Yeah, and the thing is, he’s not really even my cat!” I answered.

She looked confused. “Huh?” 

It was then that I explained the unconventional cat-sharing arrangement I am part of these days. Last fall, my friend Kelly was debating getting a cat but had concerns about her busy (pre- and post-Covid) travel schedule. I offered to be the permanent, free pet sitter any time she went out of town, and voilà — a plan was born. Kelly asked her niece, who fosters abandoned cats in New Jersey, to procure us our new best friend — something very young and very cute. The one condition of his adoption: Kelly was asked to keep the name given to him by the pet adoption group.

A couple of months later, a kitten named Stuey arrived. He had been found in an apartment complex just across the river from Philadelphia. Apparently, he was one of the most sought-after kittens in the litter because he didn’t run away from people like some of his siblings.

The origins of his name are unclear, but I personally hope he’s named after Stuart Little, the charismatic little rodent from the book and the movie, and not Stewie Griffin, the smug baby who speaks in a British accent on the TV show Family Guy. But who knows. He could be named after somebody’s grandpa.

Either way, for reasons even I don’t understand, I find myself calling him Bubbe (pronounced Bubbie), which is the Yiddish word for grandma. Hopefully this does not offend any Jewish grandmothers.

Though Kelly has not traveled much because of the pandemic, we have gotten into a routine where Stuey spends a week or two with me each month. Our running joke is that Stuey has two moms and that Kelly and I are like exes sharing custody. But unlike the moms in the classic 1980s book Heather Has Two Mommies, Kelly is not interested in women; I am the only one of Stuey’s moms who dates ladies. 

Regardless of the fact that this was never a coupling, it is remarkably close to joint parenting. We incessantly discuss every aspect of Stuey’s behavior — his sleeping habits, favorite foods, etc., etc.  In fact, we talk about him so often that friends and family who are much less intrigued by the cat’s every move are politely begging us to take it down a notch. Stuey himself seems well adjusted to having two homes. He may be the only cat I know who willingly walks into his pet carrier when it’s time for him to travel to his “other house.”

I love cats and always thought that I would get a kitten of my own as soon as I was able, but as it turns out, I’m perfectly happy with this rather bohemian arrangement. My son is allergic to pet dander, so it didn’t make sense to get a cat while he was living with me. However, he moved into his own apartment in December, so that’s not an issue anymore.  

I am finding myself surprisingly comfortable with an empty house and a quiet period, especially after a year and a half of full-time single parenting and a tumultuous few years before that when I was preoccupied with the beginning and shortly thereafter the ending of a marriage. As self-absorbed as it may sound, the idea of not committing full-time to anything right now as I decompress feels like exactly the right move. 

The time I do spend with Stuey is everything I had hoped for. He makes me laugh. I never quite know where he is going to pop up around the house. He loves to sit on my lap purring while I watch TV.  He splits his time evenly — 50% snuggling, 50% biting, scratching, and running around the house like a maniac. I’m hoping the percentages will shift a little as he gets older.

Biting and scratching aside, Stuey has helped me understand why so many people have pets. The statistics vary depending on who you ask, but most groups agree that more than half of American households include a pet, and it’s not hard to see why.

There’s something primal at work with pets. Having somebody or something to take care of gives us a sense of purpose and makes us feel needed. Doctors say humans are mentally and physically healthiest when they have secure attachments to others. Pets can provide the love and companionship a person needs, especially people who find human company taxing. 

Even those of us who don’t like animals more than humans understand the appeal. Relationships with pets are simple. They’re happy to see you every day. Most enthusiastically greet their owners each time they arrive home. They’re happy with simple pleasures like spending time together without conversation. And odds are better than half that you’ll win any argument that arises.

They’re also great for kids in terms of building empathy and teaching responsibility. They become important members of the family. I grew up with a cat named Boo and a three-legged dog named Inky, and I loved both of them with all my heart. 

I have to admit that I began to sour on dogs about a decade ago, but that was mostly out of jealousy. When I switched teams I had no idea that the lesbian community held dogs in such high regard – so much so that several of my girlfriends seemed to prefer the company of their dogs over my company. In retrospect, I probably would have done better if I had acted less like a Grand Poobah and been willing the share the road a little more with my canine competition. 

As my skin grows thicker, I’m slowly pulling out of my unjustified bitterness towards dogs. I don’t feel I have the time or energy to manage a dog on my own right now, but I am considering getting one dog or maybe even two once I retire. If I do, I plan to name them Charlie and Kathy, regardless of gender, in honor of my siblings. You’re welcome, Chibs and KTG.

And at some point, I hope to have another human companion. In the meantime, I’m good with my part-time commitment to a little furry guy from South Jersey.