Saying goodbye to my cat was one of the toughest things I have done.

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I used to work nights as a news summary writer for a broadcast news monitoring service in Times Square. I lived in the New York City suburbs and drove to work. I gave my colleague Elizabeth a ride home and stopped at apartments along the way so she could feed stray cats. She fostered cats and tried to find forever homes for them. She told me she had a cat who would be difficult to place because she was aggressive with her other cats. She asked if I would take her. I had grown up with cats but my husband didn’t want one because he worried the cat would pluck his stereo speakers. I was newly separated and lived alone so I said yes to the cat. She was an orange tabby and I named her Miel, the Spanish word for honey. She played fetch with a nerf golf ball just like a dog. She cuddled and purred but she bit me if I touched the wrong spot. I moved back to the city with Miel. We lived in a tiny studio, then a tiny one bedroom, on the Upper West Side. When I bought a coop on the Upper East Side, we moved across town. I thought Miel would jump up on the window sill and people watch like she did in the tiny studio before we moved to the rear one bedroom. But she never did. I gut renovated my apartment while living in it with Miel. I took out the vacuum cleaner to vacuum up the plaster dust on the floor. When I finished I realized that Miel had gone missing. I called my mother frantic. She said to remove the insulation below the kitchen sink and look behind the wall. I was amazed to find my cat on a small ledge. She must have jumped up on the sink and leaped through the opening at the top of the unfinished wall. She could have fallen three stories to the basement if she hasn’t landed on the tiny ledge. My mother told me to bring her out to my parents’ house in Connecticut. The renovation was too much for her. She started to pee in the living room instead of going to her litter box. I went to Connecticut to see her often. One day, I noticed she was having trouble breathing. We brought her to the vet. She had a tumor in her throat and the vet said it was time to put her to sleep. I held her in my arms as the vet administered the needle and I said goodbye to my honey cat.

By Karol Nielsen

From: United States

Website: https://karolnielsen.com

Twitter: karol_nielsen