Izzy was seven years old when she came into my life. She was a rescue cat, abused by her previous owners, and for more than a year after being adopted, she was terrified of me. She wouldn’t let me touch her, and she’d hiss and yowl when I came near her, or even when I was far from her. And then one wondrous day I’ll never forget, she changed her mind about me.
Even after that, two more years passed before she first jumped into my lap, and she never let me pick her up without voicing strenuous objection. But she was happy in my lap, sometimes even slept there. More often she slept on the back of my recliner’s headrest, purring into in my ears and sometimes painfully kneading my crew-cut.
She became a reliable source of smiles in my world, with a personality completely changed from that first year, when she’d hidden and hissed so much. Taking that terrified animal and somehow earning her trust was, I shit you not, one of the great accomplishments of my life.
She was always afraid of other people, anyone but me. If someone knocked on my door, or even spoke too loudly in the kitchen, Izzy would disappear for hours, hiding somewhere in this room, and yowling.
Oh, and the yowls. Most cats meow, but Izzy yowled, always loudly, and incredibly loudly when she wasn’t happy about something. If her water dish was empty, she could yowl like a scream. My flatmates said they heard my cat from the kitchen when she yowled.
Izzy was the loudest damned cat I’ve ever heard, and I thought of her yowls as health insurance. Figured she’d complain by yowling loudly, if she ever wasn’t feeling well, and then I’d take her to a veterinarian.
Her only complaint, though, was on Sunday night, when two very light groans came from behind my recliner. It was like the sound you’d make from slight indigestion, not enough to warrant a Pepto-Bismol. “You OK back there, Izzy?” I asked, and she yowled a reply — loud, emphatic, ordinary. She made no further noises, and I gave it no further thought, until late the next morning.
Usually she gets a drink or poops or pees or jumps in my lap every three or five hours, but midway Monday morning, it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen the cat since she’d groaned the night before. I called her name, but didn’t hear her routine answer-back yowl, so I stood and looked at the clutter behind my recliner. She’d been sleeping somewhere back there the night before, but my room is a mess, and I couldn’t see her. An ocean of old boxes and pillows and corn chip wrappers and dirty socks blocked my view.
Cats often like to sleep where they can’t be seen, and the debris in my room is thick and tall. There’s no way for a human to easily get back there, so I grabbed my baseball bat, leaned way over, and gently toppled a few boxes.
Then I spotted Izzy, curled up inside a box that was tilted precariously between an old keyboard, a chess set, and a milk crate. I called her name again, but she didn’t move. I already knew she was dead. If she’d been alive, she would’ve yowled and sprinted away when the boxes started toppling around her.
Well, fuck and triple fuck. As recently as the day before, she’d still been jumping into my lap and wanting to be petted. Her death completely blew my Monday, broke my heart, and it’s put me in a funk that’s ongoing two days later and won’t be ending soon. Her dying super-sucks, but also I’m wondering what clues I’d maybe missed.
Those two groans on Sunday night nag at me. Should I have panicked? It was a noise she’d never made before, but it wasn’t dramatic, and when I asked if she was OK, she’d answered with the same yowl she’d yowled since the day I brought her home.
Were there other symptoms?
Izzy was a heavy shedder, with mostly white fur that ended up all over my clothes, the table, the dishes, probably my lungs. A week or so ago, I remember cussing because she’d slept on my black backpack again, so it was covered in white cat-fur. More fallen fur than usual, I remember thinking, but mostly I marveled that she could shed so much and still look as furry as always.
I remember noticing a few days before the end that she’d spent ten minutes in her litter box, working at a difficult poop, when usually it took only a minute or two. But she’d had bouts of stubborn poops in the past, and who doesn’t have constipation once in a while?
Perhaps the biggest clue is that Izzy had been exploring the room more, and sleeping in unusual corners that hadn’t interested her in the past. She’d rarely burrowed into the wreckage and rubble behind my recliner until her last days, and she’d started leaping to the highest shelf in my closet, sometimes sleeping there, sometimes just sitting and eyeing me like she was queen of the jungle. Which she was, of course, but in four years in this room, I’d never seen her up there until the last week or so. Cats are crazy, and sometimes they wanna climb or explore.
She was still regularly jumping into my lap, purring. She hadn’t lost appetite or weight. She’d been hiding more than usual, but cats are moody beasts. A cat that doesn’t hide is hardly a cat at all.
She’d seemed very Izzy, and I remember petting her on the morning of the day she died, and how she’d purred.
I’m guessing it was a heart attack, but whatever took her, I think/hope it must’ve been relatively painless, since she made so little fuss.
Goodbye, Izzy, and thank you for being my cat, and my friend. I miss you so much already. There’s still fur everywhere, and my lap and my heart are empty.
Three hours Monday and two hours Tuesday were spent digging through the mess of my room to reach her, forever asleep in that box, and now I’ve buried her in it.
And I don’t think there’ll be another pet. I’m old, fading, barely responsible enough to take care of myself, and I hate this sadness at the end. Always, sadness at the end.
1/7/2026
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