Welcome to the Dead Cat Club.

Dog lover? That’s fine. We’ll accept your membership application, but it might take longer to process.

Here it is, the Monday after putting our dear, sweet, 18-year-old of a baby cat Andy down this past Friday.

It wasn’t a great weekend.

(We are going to have a discussion here soon about why we don’t put humans down when they are suffering from things like a kidney disease that inexplicably moves from stage two to four within a month despite giving arduous IV treatments at home… but I don’t have the energy or inclination or moral fortitude to go there now. Nope, this is a “lessons learned from loving another [furry] being so much that you’re not sure how you’ll cope when they are no longer there to snuggle on your stomach at night” kind of chat. We’ll get to humanasia one of these Mondays soon. Stay tuned for that light n’ fluffy conversation!)

Back to my tears.

Kidding (kind of); this won’t be a pity party post. I’ve cried enough and the 3-ply Kleenex I like is expensive so the tears are being rationed. No, this is going to be a short n’ un-sweet post, with a bit of a hissy tone (in honor of the feline personality).

Lessons learned from loving and losing yet another cat:

Okay, change of plans.

The edges of my emotions are still too frayed and raw and mezcal cocktails can’t even smooth them out (believe me I tried). I’m scrapping the list I was going to write (which would’ve included gems like, “Life is fucking absurd; we work so hard to eke out a little joy/ stay on top of the laundry/ whatever and then our loved ones just go and die anyways”).

I’m leaning in favor of one simple message that gets to the point and doesn’t require me to work all that hard when all I want to do is look at any one of the 17,450 pictures and 4,305 videos of Andy on my phone.

One single but important lesson learned from loving and losing yet another cat:

WE ARE ALL DYING AND WE NEED TO STOP MESSING AROUND BY TAKING IT FOR GRANTED. WE NEED TO START LIVING—AND LOVING—LIKE WE MEAN IT.

We get 4,000 Mondays (if we’re lucky). Time is ticking for us and our loved ones (with and without paws).

(Cats get 676 – 936 Mondays. Andy got 936. The oldest cat ever recorded, Creme Puff, lived for 1,976 Mondays or 38 years, and despite her decadent name, apparently ate a pretty clean diet of broccoli, turkey bacon, and eggs. I’m willing to forfeit a few Mondays for real bacon.)

I wrote about losing a cat before (remember Ralphie who died in 2022? Oh, he was such a nugget), and you can read that post now for interesting tidbits on how humans prefer pets to partners (no surprise there) and the nuances of animal grieving.

I also wrote this post about the reluctant gifts of grief… it’s about humans so if you’re in the mood for cat grief and cat grief alone now that you’ve been indoctrinated into the Dead Cat Club, you’ll be sorely disappointed (okay but maybe read the post anyway because it’s poignant; I promise).

For now though let’s just go maximize this time. Hug your families and animals so hard they wonder what got into you.

We knew Andy was sick about a month ago, and although we thought we could manage his kidney disease, we were still hyper-alert to his on-the-horizon mortality. The warning was a gift. We savored every lap sit and every shark hunt (it was a stuffed toy he’d kill every night but don’t tell him/ his ghost that it wasn’t real). We also savored every bland moment, like when he’d be napping or lapping up water or using the litter. We saw him through the lens of This Time is Scarce and Therefore Precious and although we smothered him with love even when he was healthy, we ratcheted the attention and appreciation up several notches with the reminder of his inevitable death. (OMG DID WE SMOTHER HIM TO DEATH WITH LOVE?!)

Deign to ask yourself how you’d treat your loved ones if you knew they had a month left to live. Would you brush your cat more? Would you listen closer to your partner’s musings? Would you spend time on the floor just being with your dog? Would you plan a way better than average date night? We all know the answer is yes. Are we willing to demonstrate that love with heightened urgency and intensity?

I’m getting back to my Kleenex and trust I will climb shortly out of the depths of despair.

Oh, here’s a bonus lesson learned from loving and losing yet another cat:

Cats do not, in fact, get nine lives: that’s a bunch of bullshit.

Now go hug your people and pets.

P.S.: Andy was one of the few acknowledgments I made in my book, You Only Die Once: How to Make It to the End with No Regrets. So now you have to buy it.

P.P.S.: Let’s connect on Instagram!

P.P.P.S.: Oh and just in case you missed it… I’d love you forever if you took 16 minutes out of your life to watch my TEDx talk!