My brother-in-law Danny took pity on Little One. The cat had, for most of its life, been in a home with a human caretaker and two feline house-mates, Taz and Puppy. But Puppy had died a few months earlier. Then Taz escaped out the front door not too long after that. And that human caretaker? Little One had no idea what happened to her. 

But we all knew: Fran, my mother-in-law, was in the hospital and then a nursing home. And then, she left this world. 

During all of this, Fran’s sons Danny and Stewart had visited her condo daily to care for Little One. She soaked up the attention. And when it was clear Little One needed more love than daily visits could provide, Danny took her home. 

The day before Fran’s funeral, Little One stopped eating. The day of Fran’s funeral, when Danny was petting her, she got out of breath. Later that day, she walked away when Danny tried to give her the attention she always sought out. 

“She’s changed really quickly in these last two days. The thing that she most loved—us petting her—is now making her sick and she’s walking away from it,” Danny said to us. “I woke up this morning and really thought I’d find her dead.” 

So Danny made the appointment with a local vet. But after just a few weeks of living with Little One, Danny was attached enough that he couldn’t even put Little One in the carrier to bring her to the vet.

My husband Michael, in town from Spain for a family visit that ended up turning into more than that, offered to help. But when Michael and I got to Danny’s house, Michael couldn’t bear to get Little One into the cat carrier either. Michael was actually the first owner of Little One. When he moved out-of-state twelve years earlier, he gave her to his mother. 

“Okay, I’ll do it,” I said. Little One hardly put up a fight. I zippered her in and carried her out to the car. From the passenger seat I could here her meows. “I’m going to sit next to her in the back,” I told Michael. 

“Don’t pet her too much—she’ll get out of breath again,” he said, wanting to make her last moments on this planet as peaceful as possible. 

I tried to pet her head as best I could through the mesh of the carrier. But after just a few seconds, she turned herself around, and we continued the drive to the vet without another sound from her. 

Michael just wanted to drop her off, pay the vet, and leave. “I can’t watch,” he told me. 

“I’ll do it,” I said quietly, taking the paperwork from the receptionist and bringing Little One into the examining room.  

I looked at the form. It asked what food she ate, how old she was, if she had any allergies. I knew none of this. 

When the vet tech came in, I said, “We’re just here to put her down. Nothing on this page is relevant.” 

“Oh, well, the doctor will have to examine her first.” 

“Okay,” I said. I wanted to pet Little One a little more, but I remembered what Michael said, so the two of us sat quietly, she in her carrier, I in a plastic chair. 

The vet came in. I explained the whole situation. 

“I’m the most removed from all of this,” I told her. “So I know hardly anything.” I explained how Little One’s owner had fallen ill and died recently, how my brother-in-law had cared for Little One in that time, how she had stopped eating, how she got out of breath when someone pet her, how we were there to put her down. 

“So no one is attached to her,” the vet said. 

“Oh—no. Just the opposite. Neither my brother-in-law nor my husband could come in here because they’re too attached!”

“Do you want me to just take her into the back room, then?” she asked. 

“Yes.” 

I finally left the examining room and explained the situation to Michael. But before we could leave, the vet called us back into the room. 

“When we went to examine her we found that she didn’t have a heartbeat.” She paused. Michael and I stood there, stunned.   

“She must have died in the car,” I said. “She was meowing when we first got in . . . “

And so it was that another pet outlived her owner. But couldn’t bear to live another day more.