I seem to have made it past the inconsolable weeping phase. Now I just sat around my apartment for the last two days, staring at the places where Winter is so vividly etched in my memory.

I see her little bed on the built-in bookshelf. I see her stretched out in the sun, making her contented grunting noises as she shifts onto her side and pulls a paw over her eyes. I see the carpet spot with her hairbrush, where she let me sit on the floor next to her and pet her, her huge purr reverberating in every chamber of my heart. I hear her following me around every morning, chirping and trilling and telling me about her dreams the night before. She’s the only cat I’ve ever had who went to bed at the same time as me and stayed near, and quiet, all night.

There are empty food bowls. Toy mice on the floor. The purple worm on a string that was her favorite toy.

I see much darker things that hurt me terribly. When I go to pee I see the hidden corner of the bathroom with the litter box, where she endured so much pain and anxiety. There is still blood in the litter. I see the windowsill where I last caught her to put her in the carrier to take her to the vet for the final time. My mind vividly recalls her terrified eyes, hears the pleading yowl that escaped her when she knew she’d been caught. The cat carrier that took her to her death sits in the corner, ominously empty.

I took the afternoon off work today to abate some of these darker things. The litter box is now in the downstairs trash. I washed all of her bowls and put them deeply away in a credenza. The toy mice went with the cat litter. I cleaned all of the spilled cat litter in the bathroom left from her desperate rushing in and out. I put the blanket that went to the vet with her in the washer.

I’m not trying to expunge her from the apartment. I’m trying to make this a place where I can live without constant reminders of her pain.

I left her little bed on the bookshelves in the sun. If her spirit is anywhere near me, I want it to have a welcome place to lie down and rest. I kept the hairbrush and the purple worm, to be included with her paw print and ashes when they come back to me.

Her love for me was pure. Purer than mine, but mine was as genuine as a human’s can be for anyone, taking into consideration the weight of the decision I had to make. I know without a shadow of a doubt how much she adored me. She told me every day, in myriad ways.

And THAT LOVE. That LOVE. I will scream it again from this page: THAT LOVE, THAT is the reason that I know I did the right thing. I’ve experienced judgment from a few people who, despite their kind actions and words, have indicated that I might have been an unfit cat companion. This is bullshit of the highest order.

I LOVED HER.

My vet, when I found the courage to ask about euthanasia, suggested re-homing my cat to an owner who might be able to handle administering medication. I felt like someone had punched me in the gut. I can administer medication to an animal. I’ve been a cat owner for the last 27 years. I could even administer medication to Winter, though it took some craftiness. But to suggest that she would be better off with someone else really threw me. Had this doctor been listening to me at all? Did she really think that I didn’t have the love of my life’s best interests at heart?

She wasn’t the only one, but I’m not going to call anyone else out.

I could administer medication. What it did to Winter was the problem, though. One vet visit a year, one dose of medication, one dish of medicated tuna, these things she trusted me through. She did not trust me after four vet visits in the space of two months, multiple grabs to squirt meds in her mouth, and deliverance of further meds in tainted tuna, tainted wet food, tainted Churo.

She ran from me. For the last week of her life, she was in great pain. She was in and out of the litter box every five minutes for an hour every morning, a howling little girl in desperation. I gave her pain meds. Then she slunk away from me and hid under the bed. It didn’t matter anymore that there were sunny spots on the floor and in her little bed on the bookshelf, she would rather cower under the bed.

Every time I came into a room where she was, she looked at me like I had struck her. Her pupils dilated, she crouched to the floor and then leaped past me like I was hunting her for sport. It was miserable for both of us.

I did my research. I did my due diligence. I fucking wanted my cat to live.

In the last days, I called in my cavalry. I called my former partner, who knew Winter as well as I did, and who listened empathetically and thoroughly, and who went over every possibility with me. I am so grateful to him. He helped me end the thought-loop I’d been stuck in about what to do. “Get a second opinion”, he said. “Call Deb.”

Debra is my oldest and dearest friend. She lives in Seattle, is an excellent veterinarian, and owns four practices in the Seattle metro area. I called her on Saturday morning.

“You can do steroids”, she told me, after I’d listed all of the ways I’d tried to help Winter, “but they’re a band-aid”. “Don’t let them do any more diagnostics,” she told me, after I said that Winter had been through two rounds of ultrasound, urinalysis, and bloodwork. “They already know what’s wrong”, she said, “You don’t need a specialist, they will tell you the exact same thing.”

“Some cats”, she said, “can’t handle it. They can’t handle the treatments. I see many cat owners that have to go through this. What you always have to keep at the forefront of your mind is her quality of life.”

That clinched it for me. Winter went from being a sweet and loving kitty to a hunted, haunted animal, unquestionably in pain. She’d lost her faith in me, and because her condition was chronic, this pattern would only continue.

So I made my decision. I hate that it ended the way it did. I hate that she was in terror until the anaesthetic was introduced into her system. She didn’t know that she was on my lap for the ten or so minutes before we finally ended her little heartbeat. I can’t explain to her why her life ended in fear and pain. I will never, ever get a chance to make that up to her or win her trust back.

I held her on my lap and looked at her while she was anaesthetized. Part of me wanted to touch all the parts of her that I wasn’t allowed to when she was awake, like her toes and her cream-colored belly. I did none of those things, it would have been a violation. Instead, I petted her the way I always have. I rubbed her face through my hand, near her whiskers, and scratched the spot between her shoulder blades, and then pet her down her back to her tail.

Then the vet came in. She pinched one of Winter’s toes, which she would have hated, and then ran a line into a blood vessel in her leg. She injected saline to make sure the line was open, then injected the drug, then injected more saline. Then she listened to Winter’s heart for a long time.

I saw Winter heave her last little breath.

To all the doubters, to anyone who thinks I didn’t make the right decision, to anyone who thinks I wanted anything less than the best for my Winter: I knew my sweet girl better than anyone, and I would have done anything to help her. Fuck you. Fuck you absolutely.