Heartbeat.

I read Sheryl Sandberg's new book, Option B, earlier this spring.  She talks a lot about the grieving process and resilience; in one of the chapters she writes about how sometimes imagining the very worst can make a truly dire situation seem better.  In her example, she writes about how losing her husband was the worst thing she could imagine....until her friend reminded her that he could have been driving a car with their children in it when he suffered his attack.  That, she said, helped her put things into perspective.

I have been trying to remember that, to think of that as this month of June - this terrible, horrible month of June - keeps spiraling out of control and beating down on me.  But it isn't easy.  Particularly when the thing you have been clinging to and counting on, the one thing that you think "well, at least I've still got this and that means I will be okay" is taken from you.

After a very sudden decline in her health and multiple vet visits throughout the week, I lost my sweet little cat Sophia yesterday afternoon.  Lost is always a funny term to me, as I didn't lose her - I know exactly where she was the moment I had to let her go, but oh it is a fitting term when all you feel is loss.  Pure heartache and emptiness after saying goodbye to a furry little family member.  I cannot express to you how hard typing those words; that last sentence are still, even on the morning after, even when it is the reality.

Sophia - Sophers as I call her - was the cat who found me.  At the tail end of August 2005 I was moving out of my too many roommates apartment into my very first ever "one bedroom of my own."  My neighbor's cat had had kittens in June and I'd already picked out and named the one I was planning to adopt.  The morning I walked across the street to get Nolan, I reached into the cardboard box the kittens had all been sleeping in to scoop him up, thinking he was the only one left, the only one claimed but not officially taken home.  With surprise, there was another kitten in the box, a solid black tiny little thing, with pretty eyes and ears that were too big; ready to be grown into.

"I thought all the kittens had homes," I asked my neighbor who stood beside me.
"Well, this one did but the little boy who took her had to bring her back. He hadn't asked his Mom's permission for a cat so she made him return her."

Nolan cupped in my left hand, I looked back down in the box, and this tiny little kitten stared back up at me, head cocked to one side.  As I think about it now, I truly think I hesitated for a nano-second.  Well, really, how much more can another cat cost? I thought.  It'd be fun to have two.  And with that, up into my right hand she went, both of them into a single carrier and off to the vet's for their first round of shots.  I remember watching the two of them, little balls of fluff with round little bellies on the vet's table, thinking over and over - I have my own kittens.  My very own kittens.  My own little cat family.   

She didn't have a name for almost a week; I remember thinking it was a ridiculously long time to have a pet with no name.  But I couldn't land on the right one, the one that felt like her.  I considered Noir (French for black) but that doesn't roll of one's tongue very easily.  Nolan had been named after my favorite character - Francie Nolan - in my favorite book - A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - but it seemed too kitschy to name both of my cats after one character.  One night I was thinking about how much I liked the name Sophie, but in my mind I thought one day I might want to name a child that.  Sophia was just a pretty in my mind, and as I lived in the North End, I liked to pronounce her name in an over the top faux Italian accent.  It made me laugh calling Sophia! Sophia! Sophia! as she scittered across my kitchen floor chasing whatever catnip laced toy I'd brought home.  Plus, it made me think of the stunning Sophia Loren.  And while this little kitten and I didn't know it yet, she was going to grow up to be a stunner of a cat.

Yesterday the vet carried her into me to say my goodbyes.  She was wrapped in a blanket, but once the vet left and gave us some time alone, Sophia crawled out of the blanket and hopped down on the floor, preferring the cool tile to rest on while I stroked her sides and scratched under her chin.  As I had done with her brother just over a year ago, I took a few minutes to recount aloud all that she and I had done together. Five apartments, two cities.  Countless hours of pets and meows and chats and advise given when I was asking her opinion on which dress I should wear.  I know she was "just a cat" but she certainly had an uncanny knack of titling her head to one side whenever I held two dreses in front of her, asking which one she liked better.  All of my adult solo life.  All of her entire cat life. 12 years and 24 days together, knowing each other.

I guess if you're not an animal person it might seem silly, this ache I feel in my heart right now with her gone.  I have had a lot of pets in my lifetime, this is literally the first morning I can remember in my entire 37 years that I haven't had a cat to call my own - either in my apartment or one that was still back home at my Mom or Dad's.  I can tell you that every single animal has it's own personality; things that make them completely them.  Sophia, sweet little Soph, was nothing but goodness and joy and love.  Always a tiny thing, she was a shy kitten and young cat - quick to hide when friends came over or if the apartment got too loud.  Nolan was the more dominant of the two, he was the first to run to the food bowl or jump in your lap, king of his domain.

But as Sophia got older, she got bolder.  I would often joke that she was a late bloomer, growing into her big ears, filling in her scrawny belly, she evolved into one of the prettiest cats I have ever seen who looked just like her Momma, solid black with greenish yellow eyes.  She was completely and uniquely herself - never before have I seen a cat eat cat food literally a kibble at a time, she would scoop up each kernel with her paw out of the bowl, set it on the floor and eat it, then back to the bowl with her paw for another one.  She loved to hunt - occasionally the morning light would catch my makeup mirror in my bedroom and I'd watch her chasing light along the walls in my bedroom - sure if she stared long enough she'd catch it.  A handful of times the shadows would trick her in my kitchen and she'd spin around chasing her own long black tail, thinking with one more spin she'd catch it.  It would make me laugh whenever I caught her doing this and then, unable to stop myself, I'd crouch down to her level and tell her "I love you sweet Soph, so much."

Soph was such a bright light and had so much energy right up until this last week.  Often at night I'd be sitting on my couch, watching TV or working on some schoolwork when I would hear a little "Soph noise" - not a meow and not a grunt - but a little unique sound she always made when she darted between my kitchen and bedroom - chasing after some vision known only to her.  When her brother died, I worried how she would handle it as they'd been together literally since birth.  The night I came home from the vet's office after having to have him put to sleep, I crawled into my bed, miserable.  Within 30 seconds, Soph hopped up on her own accord, curling herself in a ball and falling asleep right atop the pillow beside my head.  Aah, I thought.  We are going to be okay.  And I as much as I have missed Nolan for the last year, Soph and I have had so much fun just the two of us.  Now that there was no one else to vie for my lap or the sofa, she got real comfortable real fast.  Countless the amount of times I was sitting at my desk on a team call for school or working on a paper when she'd silently hop into my lap, falling asleep without a sound, warm and cozy until eventually my legs would fall asleep and I'd have to move her off.  She always, always found her way into my bed every night - either curled up in the crook of my leg (oh, the sweet comfort of waking in the middle of the night to that little love snuggled right next to me) or atop her favorite pillow, purring away in my ear.

She passed just as sweetly as she lived, with the vet techs telling me how charmed they all were with her in the few days they got to know her in the hospital.  I realize that I am biased because I was her Mom but I know, with every fiber of my being, that she was nothing but goodness and love.  The sweetest cat soul I have ever known.

It is a hard thing coming home to an empty apartment for the first time in your adult life.  It was difficult to open the door on Friday when I had left her overnight at the ER, and it was terrible, terrible, opening the door yesterday afternoon knowing she would never come home again, never be the little black spot that greeted me right as I stepped into my apartment, peeling off my jacket and shoes.

I remember when Nolan died, it took me some time to remember I didn't need to reach for two bowels each morning; to realize I wouldn't go through cat litter as fast as I had with two cats.  Now, I find myself anticipating her darting into my dress closet when I open the door; she loved to curl up in there on my pile of sweatshirts and I was always afraid I'd accidentally shut her in there.  I look for her in corners, anticipate her jump on the bed, look to make sure her water bowl is full even though I know in my brain she is no more.  I can't yet bear to put away the blanket I'd left on the sofa for her or toss the place mat I used under her food dish.  I know she's gone but I don't want her to be.  Oh, my heart.

Last summer I met up with a friend after work.  She and I had only recently met; a connection through business school.  We took the T home together and somehow pets came up in the conversation.  I told her about Soph, how much I loved her.  "It's nice to come home to another heartbeat isn't it?" she asked.

And that's the way I have always thought about my Soph.  My sweet little heartbeat.  The cat that needed me that August morning of 2005 as much as I have needed her, every single day since.