Content Warning: Animal death, grief, and vague reference to divorce
I can’t remember the exact year we picked her up from where my Aunt & Uncle were living, but I know I was under 10. I named her Midnight. I wanted to give her a longer, fancier name because I was going through my Warrior Cats phase. My dad started calling her Bosco, after the chocolate syrup he liked as a kid, and that’s what stuck on everything but the vet papers.
When I initially posted about her privately, I knew I wanted to talk about her in a more public space as well. Creating, for me, has always been an outlet for my trauma and a space for me to feel, at least during the process, as if I was doing something worthwhile with myself. Loss of life is always traumatic to some degree, but this past year has been tumultuous in ways that are hard for me to put into words.
I took Bosco’s senior portraits after making the emergency trip back to my family home after things went, to put it bluntly, absolute shit in Georgia. 2018 to 2021 was a whirlwind of good and bad. The monumental task of moving across the United States to try and piece together my life was looming.
But the cat was alive. I still had my camera gear. The weather was nice.
And I knew then – divorce pending and health declining – that not every good thing lasts forever.
In February I took her photos in the slowly setting sun and, on September 10th, she passed away while I was in the hospital.
It took months to edit her photos. Every time I pulled them up, I would remind myself that she was sickly and might not be there soon, and then she was gone. Just like that. Curled up quietly in my parents’ room.
The part of me that used to work in animal care keeps telling myself that her end, out of anything it could have been, was optimal for a street cat. Lived past twenty, properly medicated, fed well, and given all the love in the world.
The part of me that grew up with her sleeping in my bed and spent her later years hundred of miles apart says I didn’t do enough.
Logic dictates that time marches on and takes from us whenever it pleases. The heart always says it wants more time, more space to create, and the ability to appear across states in a blink to pet a cat.
But life is life, as laissez-faire as it seems, and not everything in life is possible.
So, for readers with their own pets, I hope you take as many photos and videos of them as possible. If you can get portraits done, I’d highly encourage that too.
Speaking from experience, when memory fails us sometimes photos and videos are all one has.
To the chunky little cat that loved catnip treats, chicken, and pets enough to stay alive past human drinking age: I love you. I’ll miss you. Thank you for helping me stay alive in your own way for as long as you did. I’m sorry that the younger, more clueless version of me thought we’d always have next year to spend more time together.
