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Smudge Kate died today, and none of us were ready.
We didn’t expect to make that decision this morning.
It hit fast and it hit hard.
The house is too quiet now without her voice, that strange little opera she’d sing whenever she wanted food or attention.
For the last two years she was down to nothing but soft food, no teeth left after everything she’d been through, and she still made sure you knew she wanted it.
She was probably some kind of oriental mix, slim and graceful, and you always knew it was her by that voice.
Before she came to us her life was harder than any cat deserves, abandoned, shuffled through a shelter, adopted out, and finally given to us with a diagnosis nobody wants to hear: feline leukemia.
She had so many teeth pulled.
She took medication she hated.
She put up with what she needed to, and she let you know when she’d had enough.
She wasn’t a lap cat.
She wasn’t a cat you could scoop up or hold.
She allowed rubs on her terms, and that was enough.
That was who she was.
But she still found things that made her happy.
She adored her catnip banana.
She loved to sun in the window.
And she always ended up beside my daughter at night, curling up close to her and staying with her throughout the night.
She wasn’t a pet in the traditional sense.
She made her home with us.
She welcomed affection on her own terms, hung around us every day, but never let go of her fiercely independent nature.
She wasn’t a lap cat, but she was part of everything.
She finally had safety here.
She finally had a warm place to live, and no one asked more from her than she had to offer.
The shock of losing her still echoes through the house.
She mattered.
She was loved.
And she deserved better than what life gave her.
I’m thankful she got to spend her final days here, surrounded by people who genuinely loved her.
