When I hear a small scratching sound, I go quickly to the back door, look down through the window to the exterior doormat, and check to see if he is there. When I hear a light knocking sound, I look to the magnetic screen door we installed for him to see if it moves—the way he let us know he was ready to come inside. When I see a shadow cross my field, I wonder if it is he. Is it a black cat with a white smudge on his chest? Long of body and supple of action? Kind and intuitive inside, elusive and sneaky outside? Please, be there, please. It is starting to feel silly that I keep doing this.

Last time we played God. This time God played us.

Just a few months ago, we let go of Zee, the pup of G’s childhood and my forties. On a chosen day of sunshine and togetherness, she had some CBD cookies, sat in the sun with us, and then we said our final goodbyes. It was imperfect, but isn’t everything in this realm, to a degree?

Here is what we know: the Saturday morning after Thanksgiving, Q ran outside, as per usual. A small detail whose meaning, if any, I only wonder now: he had just tried using the litter box (he preferred outside), and the puppy had barked at him. The puppy then became obsessed with the litter box, and we covered it up. (It is now in storage. Just in case.) One day bleeds into the next in my memory. Magically thought, he is on my bed now. He will be at the door when I open it next.

He does not seem missing, yet he is. He is still so very present in my consciousness, as the days tick inexorably by, with him ever absent. I have to remind myself he is missing. I can barely look at the words missing forever.

Other details: (1) he has chronic bronchitis for which he receives medication as needed. (I may have to re-write that sentence into another tense.)

(2) A day after his departure, we had two days of almost non-stop snow, piling up almost 20” in parts. (It, too, is gone now.) He did not come home before the storm. He did not come home during or after the storm. He always has come home in the past, even after an overnight away.

He knows the way home.

What can I tell you about Q? He was the unsung hero of our family. Born on the farm next door, G found him when he was a sickly, three month old kitten. The farmers gave him to us, never expecting him to outlive the winter, and more importantly for them, never to serve his prime directive patrolling the barns. That first Saturday, November 7^th, 2009, we took him to the vet where we were out $250 on medication for our free cat. We had just moved in to our new home, my favorite home to date. I was not amused, not ready for a kitten—as much as I love the company of one.

“I will love you one day, I am sure of it,” I told him. “But I am not loving you yet.”

I am a softie if I am anything, and Q’s sweet self won me over quicker than I expected. He was not a difficult kitten as long as we kept the toilet paper and paper towels out of his reach. He spent the winter recovering and went outside for the first time in the spring. He was not wild about the cold or snow, even as a baby. I never knew him to fight. He got caught in a tree when way too small and fearful. Somehow G and I got him down. These were the years of our independence. Of me learning that I was stronger than marriage made me feel. Of me trying to show G that we could do anything, including getting her scared little boy out of a tree in the middle of the night.

Q was named for the QEW, the great Canadian road we traveled en route to Michigan each year. (Everyone wanted to write his name with a “u,” of course. It was funny to observe that tic of written assumption, as it was fascinating to note that everyone wanted the cat to be a girl and the dog to be a boy.)

Whether he wanted to or not, Q spent a lot of time on the road with us, along with his sidekick, Z. They traveled all over the continental US in a van with us for many months (they were the reason we got a van), and then more time into the Maritime Provinces and eastern Canada. Two times Q escaped: once he snuck out in the night at an RV park in the Berkshires not far from where we later settled, and once he hid under the van when we stopped the car, just off one of the Canadian ferries. How he got out I will never know. Z started madly sniffing under the chassis, which made us look. I cannot imagine the alternative. It was a hard enough trip as it was.

Q loved being an indoor-outdoor being, and as I already mentioned, was almost of two minds. The indoor cozy boy who found a lap and stayed for hours, who intuitively knew when he was needed to calm a troubled heart (especially G’s). And the outdoor wild boy who brought us all and sundry small beings as prizes. Sometimes half alive, sometimes leaving us the feathers or entrails as mementoes.

When outside, we discovered a way to summon him home that invariably worked: by shaking the container of his little fish snacks and calling out in the highest pitched voice we could muster “kitty kitty kitty” or something that sounded like “key key key” with an intermittent clicking sound. G always had better skills summoning him home than I. Somehow, he would roll over for her, just beyond the door, and she would swoop him up and bring him home snuggled against her.

There was symmetry to Q’s life, appearing with a puppy and disappearing with a puppy. I cannot conclude these words without honoring the way that he embraced Trace the border-doodle, the newest member of the family. After Q’s initial skepticism, the boys learned how to play well together. We got much amusement at the dog park when we noted how Trace played as if against a cat — lots of paws but a very light touch. “That cat is raising him well” someone remarked. Now that Q is gone, we miss how much time he used to play light boxing with his brother, taking some of the responsibility for his puppy-madness off of us.

Curiously, Trace seems more mature now, without his playmate. Slightly more subdued. A few days before he left, we remarked how Q led Trace over to G when she wasn’t feeling well, as if to say, this is what we do, T. We go straight over when she needs us. By the time Q left, they had grown to lick one another in greeting and share a water bowl; they had lost all hesitancy for each other’s company. Q’s left hook was still fair game, though—he knew far better than the rest of us how to say enough and mean it.

While I keep waiting to hear the words “he’s here!” G already has made her peace in his departure, appreciating how much he showed up for her when she needed him. So many of my loves have left without me having a chance to say goodbye; I am struggling to admit Q may be yet another. I prefer to imagine him on a big pillow beside a warm hearth, having found a different home for the gloaming. I don’t want to think about how he left, or what it might have felt like in the cold, alone. I can only pray that, if he has gone to the other side, it was swift and painless. And he knows he was loved beyond measure.

I will admit to you now that the last months have been among the hardest of my life for reasons not related to Q. I am not at liberty to discuss them now (or perhaps ever), but losing Q during this time seems to book-end something incalculable: the decade post-divorce of self-discovery, the ending of G’s childhood, the shedding of layers and layers of pain and misunderstanding, and the beginning of something I cannot yet define.

What I will carry closest in memory was the way Q would settle in my arms, the weight of his body against my solar plexus, his head rubbing against my face, sometimes resting over my shoulder. And the peace I would feel because of it. Of all the cats in my life, he was the most physically affectionate. I ache as I face the reality that I may not be able to hold him again as he calms me, as I take a break from the race and we look out the window together, as I whisper in his ear, I love you boy-boy.

Couched in these words, I know I need to say goodbye, but instead I have relished in reflection. This is not goodbye, but see you again, sweet Q—by a toasty fireplace or a sunny window—just around the corner where we await each other. Thank you for loving us, staying with us, and sharing your beautiful self with us.

(I was never able to hit “send” on this.)

On December 17, 2019, I found his body.
He was in his cozy place deep under the house
where I had never ventured but had seen him emerge. The puppy’s play led me there.
Q was, for all intents and purposes, at home. This is a comfort.
He could have come inside if he wanted. He appears to have had a heart attack.
G bravely put him in a box, helped me deliver him to the vet,
and I was able to say a proper goodbye and thank his mortal coil— as I yearned to do.