Come Back to Me

Hi, bee bum. Today I brought you home.

My apartment is so quiet without you. Ever since I moved here I've always said I just wanted three things: my job, my apartment, and my kitty. For some reason the universe is set on me only having two of those three things at a time, and your absence is enormous. It hurts. It stings. It slows me down. I didn't have a life in the Czech Republic without you until last week. Your back legs became paralyzed from an embolism in your heart. As soon as you shouted, I knew something was wrong, and when I turned on the light, you were giving me the most pained and panicked face. Your big bunny feet, the ones I like to put on my face and kiss when you're sleeping next to my head, they were lifeless and floppy. While I rushed to get things together to take you to the emergency vet, you dragged yourself across the bed and hid in my pillows. I've heard of dogs doing something like that, where they isolate themselves in their time of dying. But with you I didn't know.

Once we were at the vet, your diagnoses was quick. The veterinarian told me it was very unlikely you would recover from your paralysis, and if you did, you would be in tremendous pain and in need of therapy. Until she was explaining to us what was happening, I hadn't heard of the condition but apparently it is common in cats. They can go into cardiac stress but normally paralysis and heart issues aren't completely symbiotic so they aren't immediately recognized. You were so very fine at bedtime that it was hard to believe such a tremendous event was happening in your chest. But you were crying, weak, and I found out you only weighed seven pounds. You used to be such a tub, throwing your weight around and being not just "a little heavy" as one vet called you, but actually fat. In the end you were so small. You shrank and I could completely hide you in my lap while you were napping and I was working. The vet said they would do what they could, but your outlook was bleak. The last time I saw you before being drugged was looking out of your little spaceship bubble at me. I promised you I'd be back no matter what.

I took the first operating tram at 5am back home. Everyone else on the tram was dressed and going to work, but I was wearing your favorite sweatpants and a beanie and sunglasses and had clearly been crying. While everyone went to work, I went home to wait. The four hours you were in treatment were painfully ambiguous. I kept whispering come back to me in hopes a very unlikely divine intervention would manifest through one of your nine lives and reanimate your little legs so you could shove them into my face while I was sleeping. Come back to me, please come back to me. 

I called the vet at 9:45am. I was supposed to call at 10am but wanted to know how you were doing, and your prognosis wasn't good. The treatment given to you didn't work. The vet said these events usually end up in the cat being put down. Her English skills put my future actions in a number of different ways over the course of the morning. Forcing you to sleep. Euthanizing you. To be brought down. I made her promise not to do anything until I got there.

In our last moments, you were so drugged but all that mattered was that we were together. You responded to my voice and my hands near your head, but your vision was distorted. I smelled your forehead. Even now I can smell that clean, natural scent because you took such good care of yourself. I kissed you and cried. "You smell like a kitty," I used to tell you. Your arm was bandaged up in green medical wrap holding in two different IVs. And then I apologized relentlessly. I told you I loved you and that I would take you with me everywhere. I told you I would love you forever and that you'll always be my bee bum. I had thought in your old age your decline would have been more visible or at least forecasted. But you were fine, and then you weren't.

The vet brought you out onto the steel examining table. I had never seen you so out of space but so close to me. Your body was so limp and small, so delicate and fragile. The vet sedated you first and you went completely limp. I had no idea if you could hear anything I was saying but it was the same things I always told you before bed or when I left for work. And then I said a final I'm sorry. I was stroking the soft spot behind your ears when the vet checked for your heartbeat.

You were gone. In a span of seven hours, you woke me up to get a snack and then you were gone. The vet was very patient with me while I sobbed and made arrangements to pick you up in eight days at the crematorium. And I went home. And I had no idea what to do. I didn't want to go home because you weren't here. I had your collar around my wrist and your spaceship with me on the bus ride home from the vet. I looked disheveled and uprooted, freshly beamed down from an undisclosed location. Occasionally I would catch a glimpse of myself in a window reflection. Sulking, heavy, shocked. Who was I looking at? I didn't know, but neither of us had you.

I didn't realize how much I talk to you. I still make suggestions. Let's get ready for bed. I expect you to be in certain places. I make space in bed for you. I quickly pick things up off the floor when I'm cooking because the jury is still out on if garlic is bad for cats so I want to be safe. I expect cat litter to get stuck to my feet when I walk into my bathroom. There's no little bell wandering around in the middle of the night, jumping up to where you're not supposed to be or swatting at old receipts stuck underneath my bureau.

I also didn't realize how many people care about you, people who haven't met you or seen you ever. But they know you through me because you are my life. There are still messages I haven't responded to because there are so many. People told me they felt like they knew you even though you've never met. You were a character, my ham, my little bee bum with the biggest personality. You were the perfect cat for me. You were so many things. I have only seen you hiss one time in the eight years I've had you. You had to get a few teeth taken out a few years back but you recovered and it gave you the best little lip. You never gave me any problems, at least any problems worth complaining about. Occasionally you would sing the song of your people at 3am for a snack or decide it was time for third breakfast while I slept in late so you'd bite my nose or paw at my hair, but you never complicated my life or made me wish you weren't in it because now you aren't and it is unimaginable without you.

You were my best friend and today we are back together. I took a bus way out to the sticks. The crematorium is located in the middle of a bunch of farmland and rundown refineries, scrapyards and warehouses. It was the very last stop on the 40. I hadn't been out that direction since I had to pick up a UPS package shortly after I arrived here and I ended up at a bus stop that shared its border with a yard full of emus and other leggy birds. The bus went through huge fields of yellow, past big trucks with the flat faces, around potholes that were more of an obstacle than a nuisance. At the last stop, I was the only person on the bus. From the bus loop, I had to walk about a half mile up a frontage road with chemical factories and automotive automation software companies. I remember thinking this wasn't the place for my blood sugar to go low so I let myself run high before leaving. I walked up the road full of potholes and found the crematorium. There was a Japanese bridge half eroded in the front of the building with some unattended construction materials and loose scraps from an abandoned project.

I entered and introduced myself and said I was looking for you.

Hledam moje kocka, Patrick?

The technician took you off the shelf. Your urn was in a cardboard box meant for transporting fragile goods. She showed you to me, a modest wooden urn that was far less flashy than some of the other receptacles available. You were the most valuable cargo I've ever had anywhere, my handle with care, and here you were. Your approximate birthdate and day of passing is on the outside. Your name is spelled correctly and not the Slavic "Patrik." I picked you up and felt the weight in my hands, how the shape and material was different but it was still you in there. The receptionist spoke no English but took her time with me. After figuring out some billing mistakes, I put you in your cardboard box and walked back down the road to Brno's most convenient bus stop. Once I stopped to wait, I asked you if we should go home. I waved to the emus on the way back.

You were my home. You are my home. You are my companion, my bestie, my ride or die, my emergency contact, my everything. I promised you I'd never go anywhere without you. You made me want to be a better person. You made me responsible, reliable, dependable. One of the reasons I'm sober is because of you. I told myself I might not always have you but you will always have me, and as long as you have me, I'm going to be the best person I can be for you. I still think I have to run home to you, and after work last week, it was incredibly hard to come back here. But you're back with me now. You came back to me.

I love you forever.