Phoebe Cat

We woke up yesterday morning to find that Phoebe had not. She died sometime during the night. She seemed well enough the day before, but something happened while we were doing other things, looking the other way, and now she’s gone. We went to bed without saying goodnight to her.

A string of “what ifs” and a million different versions of “it’s our fault” have been running through our heads. Even if we couldn’t have saved her, at least she wouldn’t have died alone. I hope she wasn’t scared. I hope she didn’t suffer. The vet said she had intestinal hemorrhaging, but did not know the cause. Best guess is that she ingested some sort of poison, or caught a poisoned mouse or something. But we know nothing for certain.

All we know is that she was our friend, and we will miss her dearly.

We will miss the way she played with the plastic pull string things from the frozen orange juice containers. We will miss that really long winded meow that never seemed to have an end when she was ready for dinner. We will miss the way she would sleep only on things that were on top of things. Acres of couch to sleep on? She’d sleep only on the notebook you left on the couch.

We’ll miss how she often wanted attention, but didn’t want you to pick her up or pet her. We’ll miss how we used to just pick her up anyway, and how she’d give in and purr. We’ll miss how she used to glare at us when we’d try to nibble her ears. We’ll miss how she’d run away from us when we played our music too loudly. We’ll miss how she hated the accordion, but if I took a break from practicing, I’d come back to find her sleeping in the open case.

We’ll miss how she would always take a really long time to try to jump off of things, and never succeeded in performing anything but a graceless flop onto the floor. And then walking away with her head in the air, daring us to make fun of her. Which we did. We’ll miss how she stood up on her back legs for treats, and would only drink her water from the far side of the bowl. We’ll miss her exceptionally loud purr.

We’ll miss how we didn’t have to refer to her in the past tense. We didn’t know her for the first three years of her life, but we hope she enjoyed the last four living with us.

Goodbye, Phoebe. We miss you. We love you.