The Spirit of the Black Cat Watches Over My Home
A dead friend who will be with me forever.
Five years ago on October 25, my cat Darby passed after a brief illness. He was a bit older than two, barely an adult cat, and he went too soon. Darby was the leader of a trio of black cats that came into our lives the summer we moved into our house, and he was a huge shit disturber. He was also a loving little thing, the runt of his litter, and when he wasn’t causing trouble, he could be found on either my lap or my partner’s.
The day he died, I wrote a Facebook post to describe how I was feeling, and I’m going to share it today. As I said, he died on the 25th of 2016 — a miserable Tuesday — and we picked up his remains on Halloween, which we felt was a pretty fitting day to bring our black cat home for the last time. My partner has a mummy cat prop that she bought from a Halloween store that watches over the ashes of dead pets, and Darby was added to the group.
Here is my post from five years ago. The first part is the day he died. The second part is the day we picked him up. Enjoy.
On Saturday, our cat, Darby, started acting lethargic. We were concerned, but when he was in much worse shape on Sunday, we took him into the emergency vet. He had a heart murmur and high white blood cell count, and they were going to keep him overnight until we could transfer him to a vet in west county that had a cardiologist on staff. At about quarter to ten that night, the emergency vet called us and told us that he was deteriorating and that we should transfer him immediately, just in case he had to be put on oxygen and couldn’t be moved at that point. We rushed there, then rushed him to the new vet, and got home after midnight. Sleep was restless and interrupted at 1:30 to let us know that he had thrown off a blood clot to his brain and had a seizure-like episode, but was doing better. Work on Monday was miserable, and I cut it short once I was finished with the things I needed to do.
After a call letting us know that he wasn’t staying properly hydrated and asking if we should do an ultrasound (yes, of course, whatever it takes!), we ate a light dinner and settled in on the couch. We got another call saying that they had discovered pancreatitis, and that it was a bad case, and that they didn’t know what caused it. We got dressed, got in the car, and drove out to see Darby — half an hour through rush hour traffic. We got to see him for a few minutes. He had been put in a warming sleeve to keep his temperature up, and had a feeding tube in his nose and an IV in his paw, but he was up and kicking. Despite being hooked up to a bunch of tubes, he was alert, he knew who we were, and he tried to jump down to greet us. We gave him as much love as we could in the few minutes we had, and said goodnight. As we were sitting in the waiting room, I cried. I hadn’t cried since about sixth grade, when pretty much anything made me cry. Then, one day, I just stopped crying, and swore that I never would again. Even after allowing myself to cry in my early 20s, I still hadn’t truly cried — just a few tears, maybe a sniffle or two here and there — until now. My cat was sitting in a cage, afflicted by something out of my control, and the vets weren’t sure what precisely was going on, how it got that bad, or what to do. I had absolutely no control, so all I could do was cry.
The call came at 5:59 this morning. He had gone into cardiac arrest and they were trying to resuscitate him. I said that I understood, relayed the message to EMP, and with very little else said, we dressed and got in the car. The second call came on the way. EMP answered, said a few things, hung up, and got quiet. I asked the question I knew the answer to, and she told me that we had some things to take care of once we got there. We talked about a lot of random things on the way, mostly just to keep the silence from eating at us.
When we arrived, we were escorted into a room with a couch and lots of tissue boxes. The vet came in, told us that he was gone, that they did what they could and didn’t really know what caused it, and that he had been incredibly sweet while he was there and had won over the hearts of the techs and vets. We held each other while they wheeled him in on a gurney, lifeless, covered in a red plaid blanket except for his head. I got up to say goodbye to my cat. I didn’t even notice the vet leave. He was so still, his black fur shaved in places for the tubes and IV, and he looked slightly surreal. I pet him, stroked his fur for the last time, told him it would be all right, and said my goodbyes. Then, I cried, that really hard, ugly cry of loss. EMP held me for a few minutes while I got it all out, and once I collected myself, I sat on the couch while she said her goodbyes. She stroked his fur, told him it would be all right, told him to say hi to some of our departed animals and humans, and kissed his head. I gave him one last kiss goodbye as well, and we held each other and cried.
In my life, I can’t remember crying this much over the death of anyone. Hell, I cried again writing this. I only knew Darby for two years and a bit, but he cuddled his way into my heart. He was my cat in a lot of ways, whether it was always coming to my lap over EMPs, or greeting me at the door, or acting out by jumping on top of the statue in the living room, or destroying my French press by pulling it out of the tea cabinet and onto the stone tile floor. Today, I ask that you hug your loved ones, be them human or animal, and be thankful that they are there to love you back. Darby was a little over two years old, and a week ago, he was rampaging around and being a little asshole like normal. Now he’s gone. Please, take a minute to cherish what you have. Thank you. RIP Darby, 2014–2016
Darby came home today.
I got the call that he was ready to be picked up around 3 in the afternoon on Halloween — fitting, to say the least. It came sooner than I had expected, which was a bit of a relief, in a way. I texted EMP to let her know that we would need to pick him up after I got home from work. Her reply was simple: “Okay.” It was about what I was feeling.
I got home around 5 and greeted EMP. She asked when we should go get him, and after a brief discussion, we decided to wait a bit, since I needed to unwind from an unpleasant day at work and we would miss most of rush hour if we waited. After a little bit of killing time, we piled into the car around quarter to six and took off. The 30-minute drive was completed in silence.
When we got to the vet, we were helped right away by a pleasant vet tech. We told her we were there to get Darby. She nodded, gave us a brief but sincere “sorry,” and went to the back. After a minute or so, she emerged with his carrier, along with his pink blanket inside, still covered in his fur. Darby was in a white cardboard box, along with a plaster paw print and some papers. The tech had me sign something to verify that I had been by to pick him up, and we took his carrier and his ashes and quietly left the vet. I could barely keep it together enough to make it to the car. We got in and both immediately broke down in tears, holding each other over the center console as best we could, the remains of our cat in my lap, his carrier and the last remnants of his fur on his blanket in EMP’s. After a few minutes of sobbing, we collected ourselves enough to check that we were both all right. We weren’t, but we were close enough to get back on the road. The ride home was mostly quiet, but we composed ourselves enough to discuss what we needed from the store for dinner. The consensus was potatoes and ice cream.
As we parked in front of the house, groceries on the floor of the car and cat in EMP’s lap, I reached for Darby. She shook her head, and I understood. I carried in the groceries. She carried Darby for what would be his last time coming home from the vet.
You’re home now, Darby. You’re home.