I don’t know how to make the call.

Jessie is 14. We think. When they handed her to me at the shelter, I was 24, fresh off the loss of a dog I’d only had for 2.5 years, looking to foster a cat because I wasn’t ready for another dog but didn’t want an empty house. 

They said they believed she was a year old. I eyed her skeptically, she eyed me grumpily. I had a feeling she was an ancient, immortal crone waiting for the Anthropocene to do itself in so she could rule as rightful queen over whatever came next. 

She was supposed to be a foster.

She’d known she was home 6 months before I did, when the foster coordinator at the shelter foisted her on me to get her out of the shelter before she caught the URI that was spreading around the cat rooms. She sauntered out of her carrier that first night and settled in on my bed like she was just relieved I’d finally come to get her, she’d been waiting. “She’s a foster,” I insisted, even as she rubbed her head against mine like she couldn’t tell me she loved me hard enough. Then one day I was seized with fear at the thought of someone applying to adopt her, and I knew what she’d known all along. She was meant for me.

Now, 13 years later… it turns out during the last year I was losing my dad, I took her in last week thinking it was just another flare up of IBD.

And turns out I’m looking at what is likely lymphoma I can’t afford to have biopsied, let alone to treat.

I’m afraid at this point to take her in for more tests because I’m afraid of coming home with empty arms. But I watched my dad deteriorate slowly and agonizingly until his last few weeks of his life were no life at all. 

When that was happening, I was weirdly jealous of people who lost their loved ones with no notice. No time for anticipatory grief, which feels at this point like the perpetual state I’m going to be frozen in forever.

But I also know even when Dad took his last breath, my entire body rejected the reality that he wasn’t coming back. I instantly wanted to take it all back, every second I ever thought “how horrible, to have to die so slowly.” I went in and out of states of that dissociative numbness versus crushed to the floor by the weight of my grief.

Even then, I had the option to come home; I hadn’t lived in even the same city as my father in over 6 years, let alone shared a roof with him for more than half the time I’d had Jessie. 

But I have lived in like 9 different places over the last 13 years, and Jessie (my cat) has been with me in every place, including the time it was just me and her in a brand new state where I knew not a soul, only the new coworkers I was meeting for the first time. 

She’s been with me almost my entire post-college adult life. New apartments, back in with my parents, another new apartment, halfway across the country for a job - and back - and back halfway across the country - and back again. Cities I knew not a soul other than hers, an apartment I lived in “by myself” for the first time where she made sure I wasn’t actually by myself. A dumpy studio barely big enough for me, that I made her share with the dog she’s been tolerating for 11 years. COVID. Losing Dad. Nights our dog, who Jessie has reluctantly mothered for 11 years, had to spend under close veterinary supervision, Jessie held vigil with me, waiting for a call.

All of that, through it all. She was there, waiting steadily and wisely, a constant. It has been her and me. 

All last year, I was spending every other week 3 hours away caring for my dying dad. I’d come home and there she’d be, waiting for me, like she was the one taking care of me. Coming home after my dad passed, I know it was easier because I still had Jessie there, like I had had through all the tumult of the past 13.5 years. 

You see, my very first pet ever, I was 20-21 and he was a kitten who we had adopted 5 months prior. At 8 months old we discovered he had aggressive, most likely untreatable cancer. It felt so unfair.

But today, the grumpy shelter cat I foster-failed more than 13 years ago… has taught me it doesn’t feel any fairer just because they get 12, 13, 14 more years of life. 

Because I feel like the worst pet owner of all time for not having saved enough to get all the tests and treatments in the world to keep her alive as long as possible. I don’t know how much more to do for her, because there’s only so much more I can afford, especially when there’s no guarantee it will make her better.

I’ve been spending every moment she comes out of hiding for snuggles crying into her fur and thanking her for 13 years. Constantly flipping back and forth between thinking “it’s time. It doesn’t make sense to just let her keep deteriorating at her age. Think of Dad,” and thinking “she’s nothing like where Dad was that final month. She may hide more, but she still snuggles. She’s still Jessie. I’m a monster for even considering it.”

I guess what I’m trying to say is I don’t think it will ever feel like I’ve cherished my time with her “enough.” 

Anticipatory grief for Jessie, so much more than “my cat.”