she liked beans, fruit, and cheek pets

I think this might be the hardest thing I've ever written, but I'm going to do it anyway. It's been a rough time, as of late. Because one of our cats, Pawly, died on January 3rd. She was only 5 years old. She died of complications from liver failure. She had quit eating, but we figured she was eating less and being finicky and it was okay because she was fat and needed to lose a few pounds anyway. But it wasn't okay. And we didn't realize it until it was too late. I didn't even know she'd lost weight until she was 2 pounds lighter. After another week she had lost another pound, and that's when it finally became clear that something was wrong. She wouldn't eat. She was sleeping a lot. She was drinking out of the toilet and sitting on the bath mat, something she'd never done before. She hissed if the other cat got anywhere near her. We took her in to the vet and they did blood work and sent her home. The next day they asked us to bring her in, we did, and she died as they started to work on her.

I didn't get to say goodbye.

So I'm doing it now.

We got Pawly when she was 6 weeks old, tiny and adorable. She had spots on her belly, and she was so feisty. But then she climbed into my husband's hand and fell asleep. He was in love. We took her home, and laughed at everything she did. She toddled. She dragged the toilet paper off the roll. She climbed people like trees with her tiny, sharp claws. She slept under the covers by our feet. And we doted on her.

She never learned how to properly meow--it always sounded more like a bark. She used to spot spiders on the ceiling and alert us to it by barking at them, and when I opened a can of beans she always had to have a few. She also loved cantaloupe, strawberries and mangoes. She would bite you if you petted her wrong, but eventually she taught us that the proper way to pet her was by rubbing her cheeks. She loved that.

We got another cat a few years ago, hoping that she would like him and be friends with him, but she never did. She tolerated him and they played, but she never quite forgave us for it I think. She always wanted to be the top cat.

No one ever thinks that someone they love will die early. We figured we would just take her to the vet, spend whatever money they required, do whatever they asked us to, and they would fix her. We had already rearranged the apartment to separate the cats when we got the call that she hadn't made it. I thought I had another 10 years at least with this odd little creature that we picked to live in our house.

Our home feels vacant now, 10 days later. Even though we still have Digory, it isn't the same. Pawly was a symbol of the commitment my husband and I made to one another, when we said to each other, this is going to last and now we have a pet together. She was a great cat, a strange one, but we loved that about her. She was part of our family. We are really going to miss her.