Sophie

“For one so small, you seem so strong.”

~ You’ll Be in My Heart by Phil Collins

My family growing up were unashamedly dog lovers. There was a stint or two when I was too young to care much where my mother conned my father into getting a cat. I don’t remember a lot besides the day we tried bringing her home, which was a catastrophe inside the car.

It may not be honest that I tell people I didn’t grow up with cats, but fundamentally it is true in my mind – cats were never in my house long enough to leave an impact. I’d love on my relatives’ cats, but at the end of the day always went home to my dog. It didn’t bother me not to have a cat growing up; I had an assortment of odd animals pass through my life as pets, including a ferret, chinchillas, dwarf frogs, and a hermit crab, to say the least; I was not neglected by my parents in the realm of family critters. For the last 11 years or so, our dog Maxx has been the solitary family pet. All this is to say if I ever did decide to welcome a cat into my life that I could call “mine”, it would be special.

And it was.

On September 12^th of last year, a mere ten days after marrying the love of my life and moving to Baltimore, Joseph and I rescued two kittens. They were cousins – the girl, an orangey-brown tabby, we named Sophie; the boy, my silver prince, we named Emmerich.

They were 8 weeks old at the time. Little did I know how hard I would fall for them. I never could have prepared myself for the love and joy that these two babies brought me; and, by extension, the tremendous, breathless sorrow of loss that permeated our house just this week.

We celebrated their first birthday’s in mid-July and were approaching our first rescue anniversary. Unfortunately, our babygirl Sophie would not be able to celebrate with us.

Last Thursday I received some lilies for my birthday – lovely flowers with a lovely scent, and creamy orange petals. I immediately put them in a vase of water on the dining room table for all to see. Sophie, the one notorious for eating things she shouldn’t, took this as an opportunity to nibble on the new addition to the house. She swallowed a petal and regurgitated it shortly thereafter.

For those of you who are already shaking your heads in horror, I know it seems such a simple and obvious piece of knowledge. For those of you who are like us and have no idea, please pass this message along to anyone you know who owns a cat or is thinking about getting a cat: lilies are one of the most toxic things a cat can ingest. Even the water in the vase or the pollen or the stalks of the flowers are highly poisonous – all it takes it one little bite, one little sniff, and kidneys begin to fail.

We didn’t find this out until it was too late. 

A couple of days passed without much incident since she vomited the petal. On Monday morning, Joseph noticed she was moving stiffly and acting incredibly lethargic; I raced home from my errands and beat my way through traffic to take her to a local animal hospital. At this point we still didn’t know what was going on. If I read back through my texts from that day, I am still heavily under the impression that this is something she will recover from and we’ll be back home in no time. Still, the doctors checked her in and kept her overnight for some analyses. Nothing was certain yet, although I’m sure the doctors had their suspicions.

By the next day at 2pm, the doctors informed us that her kidneys had failed beyond recovery, and that it would be the best course of action to put her to sleep as soon as possible. Fluid had built up in her bladder, unable to succeed through the natural urination process, and if this was prolonged it would end up flooding her lungs. Joseph got the call while he was at work, and he called me during a break at the library. We rushed to Sophie’s side, spending her last few moments on earth petting her silky fur and calling her sweet names. She was a little uncomfortable, though thankfully not in pain. I think we bore all the pain she could have possibly felt, and much, much more.

The suddenness is what cuts the deepest. It’s one thing to see the death of a pet gradually coming when they’re approaching 10, 15, 20 years of age, but when you go from one day imagining those long years with the precious animal growing up with your kids to the next day where they no longer exist in your arms, where you will never again call them by name and have them trot toward you with sounds of pleasure and recognition…the brutal suddenness changes everything about the grief that rushes in.

We were not prepared for this. She was only a year old. She, and Emmerich, were our babies, the first additions to our newly bonded family. To lose her only a year later and so rapidly all-at-once is utterly devastating. The last time I lost a loved one (person or animal) was my grandfather 10 years ago, and I have never lost a pet in my adult years. This grief, as one so conscious and feeling, tears me apart, sends tremors deep into my bones. I loved Sophie so freely, so thoroughly, and she loved us unconditionally – I suppose it’s only fair that the gaping hole she left behind would ache so acutely.

This past Wednesday was the first full day without her in our lives. I couldn’t stand coming home from work without her fluffiness greeting me at the door that I collapsed onto the couch in hysterics. Joseph held me tightly to him, our bitter tears mingling. It hurts. My God, oh it hurts like hell. Her absence even after such a short bright time is absolutely unbearable. Every little thing reminds us of her, and the grief that follows floods my stomach and my lungs, rendering my appetite entirely absent and making it hard to breathe.

She was the most brilliant little light of my life. As John Smith says in the Disney movie Pocahontas: “I’d rather die tomorrow than live a hundred years without knowing you.” If I could travel back in time and warn myself on September 12^th of 2017 that this tragedy would inevitably happen, that it was a fixed point that I couldn’t change, I would still have bundled her in my arms and taken her home. As much as this pain is all-consuming, I am thankful for the year I was able to spend with her. She taught me that cats can be more than grouchy balls of fur. We passed many hours with her napping on me while I wrote or read or slept. She nuzzled her way into my heart and before I even knew it, I was wholeheartedly in love.

Something that makes me feel more at peace is imagining this visual: God sits at his desk, checking prayer emails, and Sophie jumps up onto his lap like she did to us on a regular basis when we were at our computers. She snuggles into him and dreams of chasing flies while he pets her softly with one hand, typing with the other.

She went without pain to the giant windowsill in the sky, where there is eternal sunshine and an infinite supply of birds to chatter at. We did the right thing with the knowledge we had. Still, this wave of grief will lap at our heels for a while, and we will never forget our first kitty – our first baby.

Rest in peace, Sophie. You were the best little kitten anyone could ask for. Your heart was too pure for this world.

Friends, I now ask two things of you: first, pass along the knowledge that lilies are lethal to cats – don’t assume longtime cat lovers know. As soon as cats come up, lay that fact down. Be aggressive about it if you have to. Sharing that little tid-bit of knowledge now might save a life later. Second, we would appreciate it if you could share photos or memories of Sophie in the comments section. Her legacy is one of love and softness, and we know that we aren’t the only ones who will remember her with fondness.

In Memory of Sophie

7/15/17 – 8/28/18