On Monday, I start a new consulting gig; I got the offer on Tuesday.  Instead of celebrating today, I had to make the hardest decision of my life, to end another's life.    It's been a tumultuous week.

Keely, also know as Keelomonster the PsychoKitty among many other honorifics and slurs, was over 16 years old, and she's been my cat since she was five weeks old.  I taught her how to drink. She taught me the simplicity of bliss, and the complexity of love. 

Keely loved cream cheese. When she was younger, she'd practically jump out of her skin when I made a bagel. I'd put some cream cheese on my finger, and she'd lick it off, eyes closed, radiating bliss.  In that moment, the world existed of me, that cream cheese, and Keely.  I always thought of it as a life lesson.  Last night, when trying to tempt her into eating something, I put some cream cheese on my finger, and there was a shadow of that bliss, that connection.  But it wasn't the same. 

She started to show her age this year, but for the longest time she passed for a cat half her age.  I noticed two weeks ago she wasn't eating quite as much. Over the weekend she stopped eating.  Today, the lab tests showed kidney failure and the prognosis with treatment was still very poor.  I decided not to be selfish enough to prolong her obvious discomfort by shuttling her home and back again to die, when she wasn't eating, and clearly not doing well.  Cars and being trapped in the carrier stressed her out. It would be selfish of me to subject her to that.

Some might think it's just a cat, but despite the hairballs, the shedding all over my suits, the scratches, there was much love and conversation.  And she could converse; she'd meow questioningly at me, and I'd ask her what's up, and she'd chirrup and meow in response, with inflection as if we were speaking the same language.  She liked to sleep curled in my arm pit, and to stand on the back of my knee if I slept in too long when her food dish was empty.  She'd mewl sweetly to get her food dish filled, but she'd sit passive agressively by the porch door to be let out to bask in the sun.

Keely was a Boston cat. She was born in the summer of 1991, probably not to far from the Dorchester streets where they filmed Gone Baby Gone.  And she was tough.  She intimidated the vet a bit with her ferocity over being vet handled.  She had some serious 'tude, even at the end, when she was clearly so weak.  She'd already suffered being forced into her carrier, and on a car trip, both of which she despised, and then was getting poked and prodded when she was in pain.  She remained feisty in her way, til the end. She was a pain the ass, but she was well loved.

She was not a cuddle cat.  She hated being held, but she liked to snuggle, and as I was saying goodbye she let me encircle her in my arms on the floor. When the sedation kicked in, prior to the last, fatal injection, I was able to hold her in my arms to me for the first time without her struggling and scratching.  The end was quick and peaceful, and I know it was the right thing to do.

But I miss her terribly.