Yara

I finally called the vet.

“I think I need to put my cat down,” I said. Like a murderer.

“Okay, what is happening?”

Where to begin?

Well, you see doc… Yara lost about 3/4th of her body weight in two months. She’s in pain when she walks. She defecating on my carpet. She can’t get into her litter box. One of her teeth might have fallen out yesterday. Oh, and she might have had a seizure.

“A seizure?” That was the last straw. The person on the other line was alarmed.

“Well, she had trouble standing up and started shaking for a few minutes. She was fine after that.”

“You probably should bring her in now.”

“If I bring her in,” I said, “she’s probably not coming home.”

Urgent care is expensive. It would have been $100 cheaper to wait until the next day to schedule an appointment. But I didn’t want to put it off anymore. We found Yara under Solomon’s bed. She’s spent most of the past two months under either Solomon or Samson’s bed. We coerced her into her cat carrier. She peed on the carpet. Yara pees when she is afraid. Solomon and Samson wept and told her they loved her. Told her goodbye. Katie did the same thing.

Yara sat next to me in the car. Mewling as she always mewls in the car. Mewls is a funny word. I told her it was okay and let her rub up against my finger. We got to the vet. It took 45 minutes between going back to the examination room and when the vet could see us. I stroked her cheek and babbled gibberish into her ears for what felt like eternity. Yara-Monk. Yar-Yar. All the stupid, embarrassing things I’ve called her over the last 17 years. She lay motionless. Purring and rubbing up against me.

“I think it hurts her to move,” I told the vet when they arrived.

“I think it does too,” they said. “Cat’s are predators. They are good at hiding pain. She is in a lot of pain.”

I started crying. And then I couldn’t stop crying.

“Do you want to be in the room when we put her down?”

I couldn’t do it. It was too much. I told her goodbye and they took Yara into the back. I paid an exorbitant bill.

And then I was driving home. Weeping. I couldn’t believe how much I was crying.

***

Katie and I picked Yara out a lifetime ago. From the Humane Society in St. Paul. She was our second choice. We spent the afternoon playing with a black cat in the back only to learn it only came as a pair. So we pivoted on our way out the door.

“We’ll take that one.”

Sure, the cat we chose was frozen with fear. But she was fluffy. And cute. We learned that Yara was found in the engine of an abandoned car. She spent her first 6 months in the wild before being rescued.

“She might be feral,” I remember the people at the Humane Society saying. I shrugged. I might be feral too.

I’m convinced Yara was struck by lightning. She turned into a ball of anxiety when it stormed. Found the smallest crevice in the house and had a panic attack. Again, I get it.

We put her in the second bedroom of our little house in Northeast Minneapolis when we first got her home. I closed the door. She was gone when I returned. I looked everywhere. Finally, I checked the millimeter gap in-between a full length mirror and the wall. Impossibly, she had wedged herself into the space.

Yara is the Hebrew word for fear. So that is what we named her.

Yara became less fearful over the years. Adjusted to the endless stream of affection we showed her. Later, we learned she was a Norwegian Forest Cat. Talk about prestigious. Yara kept our house in Minneapolis free of mice. She was a gentle companion. She never let you get too close, but over the years we got closer and closer. Sometimes she’d lay next to me when I slept. Never on me.

Yara was in the car with me when I left the Twin Cities and moved to Pennsylvania. Mewling. She was in the car with me when moved back to the Midwest. She made it exactly one year in Iowa City. That anxious cat became something of a traveler. Just as this anxious man has become something of a traveler.

Yara has been with us since I was in my twenties. And now she isn’t.

***

17 years is a long time.

I felt those years as I drove home from the vet. Weeping.

2007 turned into 2023. I got married. Got a PhD. Had two kids. Became a college professor. Moved to two different states. Got to my thirties. Got to my forties. Yara was with me through all of that. Not close, but always getting a little closer. At the end she’d nestle next to me on the couch while I was playing Tears of the Kingdom. Waving her fluffy tail in my face. Annoying me.

Death is bad and you can’t convince me otherwise. I’m of the view that once something is conjured it doesn’t go away. We go on and on. Living things go on and on. And I can’t say any more than that. Because I’m too dumb to know exactly how and why or what. And so are you. But I’m convinced that life is a good thing and that death is a bad thing and that good overcomes bad. So I’ll take comfort in that as I grieve for Yara.

Somehow and in some way, I will again howl “Yar-Yar” like a lunatic and Yara will blink her eyes shut, bow her head, and offer me her ears to rub. Always a little closer.