My cat had a stroke on Tuesday night. She was unable to stand, eat, or drink all of Wednesday. My parents and I put her to sleep Thursday, dug her grave, and buried her. To say that this was unexpected would be an understatement. She was 16 years old, but still in great shape. She could still go shooting down the hallway at a million miles per hour, was often found chittering, and jumping at birds. And she isn't even our oldest cat; our oldest is 20, and we thought for sure it would be her going first. We weren't prepared for this. Mom says it's good it wasn't a long, drawn-out process, and I'm also happy that she didn't suffer for long. But this caught me completely off-guard -- after all, I was just home that past weekend, and she was her usual, energetic (if a little grumpy) self.

It's not that I thought she would live forever -- I just thought I had more time. We had grown apart in recent years. With my going to college 80 miles away and not visiting as frequently as I could, she cozied up to my parents and was no longer just my cat.

But we were downright inseparable when I was a kid. She was always with me, to the point that she didn't even want to leave me alone long enough to use the bathroom -- whenever I went, she would come pawing and meowing at the door. She slept in my bed every night. We were always playing, and she never lost her playful spirit. My family took her with us to do family photos. We fed her chicken from the dinner table. When we sat down together to watch TV, we would compete with each other to try to get her to lay on our laps. And for some reason, she wouldn’t sleep in my bed anymore in the past couple years, so I would stay up late in the living room just so she would lay on me. Sometimes I would even sleep in there.

She brought love to whomever was in the house, much to the annoyance of those who were allergic to cats. She would approach total strangers and jump on them and start washing herself like she owned them (because she knew she was darn cute and could get away with it). That was Pywacket, She was really spunky. And seeing her not even able to stand herself up or wash herself was hard, because she never liked staying in one place for too long. She was always on the move.

That’s why we made the decision to put her down, and it was a hard one. She was miserable, and my parents aren’t home often enough to be able to give her the care she would have needed. My mom was gone for only a few hours before we knew how bad she was (because she was able to stand up and move around at the vet earlier in the day; she was just a little wobbly, but was eating and drinking just fine), but she came home to find her rolling around on her scratching cardboard drenched in her own pee, trying to pull herself up and crying for help. She refused food and water, and when a friend of mine and I tried to force feed her water, but she fought us hard. We didn’t want to see the light drain from her eyes at all that she was unable to do. And at her age, there was no chance of recovery -- she was stuck the way she was. That’s no way to live; she deserved so much better.

I always knew she would die someday, but I never realized what that would mean to me. I thought I would be prepared for it somehow; I knew people lost pets all the time and I saw them holding up OK. But I’m an absolute mess. I feel like I’ve lost part of myself, and I have, because we grew up together. I raised her ever since she was a kitten, and I was also very young. We had the bond of being babies together, and I’m never going to have that again. When I’m at home, I keep expecting to see her come down the hallway and start scratching at her scratching pad. Or when I’m sitting with my legs propped up, sometimes I think I see the tip of her tail go under me so that she can come around to the other side of me and jump on my lap.

I’ve always defined myself as the "cat girl." But now I’m without my cat, who was my baby. I feel like a big chunk of me is gone and will be gone forever. She was integrated so much into our daily lives that our home feels so empty. With every action, we know she isn’t there. Even just standing and talking in the kitchen, we know she’s not slinking around to see if we have any food for her. She’s not standing at the back door and crying to get out. She’s not prancing around the garden; she’s not sleeping on mom’s bed, or her office chair. And we don’t hear her nails clicking on the floor when she walks, or making her weird guttural purr-like noise, or meowing in funny little spurts when dad pats her side.

I thought it might be easier because at my apartment at school, I never saw her on a daily basis. But I know she’s gone; I can feel it. And the world feels wider apart, and bone dry, especially on days like today when the sky is white and the air feels heavy. I can feel the empty spaces where she was, and they burn. I’m not OK. I feel like I’ve been ripped in half. For God’s sake, though: she was just a cat. I feel like it shouldn’t be so hard.

But she was my world. Even though we weren’t as close in more recent years, she was my baby.

There are so many good memories, so many good things I could write here. But right now, it hurts too much. I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that she’s gone, and she’s never coming back. I loved her so much and I don’t think I’ll ever recover from her loss.

I wouldn't wish this pain on anyone. Goodbye, Pywacket.