In the most recent entry of this “diary,” I wrote that my eldest cat had gone senile suddenly, as if a switch had been flipped. For three days she did little else than wander around in a daze, get stuck in corners as if she were a robot with broken programming, pee herself, and fall face-first from chair or sofa-tall surfaces. Although something has broken permanently in her brain, because she has forgotten some basics about life such as not peeing herself, and likely no longer recognizes me nor her daughter (which may have been a blessing in disguise), she will get to live for a while longer.

Today I returned from work to find that cat’s daughter, sole surviving child, dead. She had been wasting away for weeks if not more. The vet couldn’t find anything wrong with her other than being super old. It seems that her heart stopped beating while she was sleeping.

I wonder for how long I will remember how it felt to hold her dead weight, or how devoid of light her eyes were. Goodbye, my little one.