I've been thinking about my late cat Padgett a lot recently, as I have other friends going through the sadness of pets dying. It's getting near the time of year when she died too. Dying isn't easy, even when it's peaceful. It's hard.

For thirteen years I had one pet, a neurotic beautiful starlet tortoiseshell cat. She was, as torties are, a very one-person cat. Other people didn't see her very often. She had beautiful huge green eyes and one paw dipped entirely in tan. She was my familiar. I'm not nearly that glamorous, but she and I were a team.

Her death was awful. She had been ailing for months in various ways that I wasn't handling well. One Friday night I got home late only to be completely unable to find her--not normal in a third-floor one-bedroom apartment. I called friends in hysterics and they were the ones who found her on the ground below my front window where she had landed on a spike.

It's never been clear if she died then fell through the window screen (there was a rip) and to the ground, or died because she fell, or was dying as she fell... All I know is that I felt wracked about her going that way, so desperate and alone, pushed to the edge. I cried for 72 hours straight that weekend, so hard that I had to wear glasses to work on Monday because my eyes were so puffed up and sore. I cried through meals in public, while I was watching TV, while I was in bed. I felt so terrible about how my horrible inability to handle her illness meant that just as I was gearing up for treatment and help (she was supposed to start new treatment that Monday)--she died. She never had a chance. I was so sad she was gone.

I was so racked with guilt about not helping her better in those last months... I was uncomfortable about her as she was sick, about the messes she made. I got mad at her sometimes. Dying was hard. I wasn't Florence Nightengale. I did my very best, but I was so upset about her dying at the same time that I was her sole caregiver...I had to face the fact that I didn't face things as well as I thought. I also had to face that I couldn't have done as much to change the situation as I thought, despite all that. She had been sicker all along than I wanted to admit.

I also had to face the fact that I think she did it her own way, on her own time. Seeing as she was a beautiful eyelash-batting primadonna, she did it (ridiculous, but true) in a melodramatic swandive. She had no other way to get out of that apartment. I don't think she wanted shots and invasive treatment. I think she did what she wanted.

I had to face all of that (still do). Here's the point: I had to have faith that she knew how much I loved her, with my faults and all, that she probably knew how hard it was for me too. Make my peace with it. Animals sometimes know better than we do.

I loved her so very much. She was a great, personality-filled kitty who kept faith.