The sweetest, cutest, funniest, bravest, most adorable little gray tabby cat ever, died at sunset the night before my 54th birthday. Her name was Bliss and she was my cat, and also my role model — I always admired how thoroughly she lived in the moment, relished sunny patches, and had such clear, defined boundaries. In recent years, whenever I’d spin about the house, stressing over the small stuff, my husband Scott would say, “Be like Bliss.” And I’d try, but it was a struggle. I’ve never been as certain of myself as Bliss always was.
It’s been a week since she died and I am bereft. There’s no better word for it. I can barely talk about her. I’m crying all the time. I feel so fragile — eggshell thin and riddled with tiny cracks — way too fragile to interact normally with people. Since I’m home alone most of the day, I don’t have to interact with anyone. But that’s the thing: I’m home alone most of the day. No kitty. No Bliss. Her absence smacks me in the face constantly: a gaping hole — an empty space so pronounced it might as well be solid.
>^.^<
Bliss had been the last of a litter of kittens abandoned in my friend Robbin’s brother’s barn. Robbin and her family were fostering the kittens, trying to find homes for them, and posting adorable kitten photos on Facebook. I had commented on the kitten photos but I can’t remember if I actually said we might want one, or if I just made some kind of standard “Oh how cute” Facebook response.
I do remember that once Robbin sensed my interest, she unleashed a targeted, social media marketing campaign on my wall. This was 2010, well before the algorithm started showing us customized, hard-to-resist ads on social media for things we hadn’t known we wanted. Robbin was ahead of the times, bombarding me with adorable photos of the last of her foster kittens with captions like, “Don’t you want to take me home?”
Turns out we did and so the 8-week-old kitten who would soon be known as “Bliss” came to live with us: so small, so cute, and always so brave.
>^.^<
I knew I’d be sad when Bliss died, but the intensity of my grief has blindsided me. Her death did not. She had been declining for months. She was an old cat — going on 14. The vet thought she had liver cancer. There wasn’t anything that could be done, although Scott and I tried to coax her to eat cat treats and weight gaining kitty supplements that supposedly even the pickiest cats loved. Not Bliss. She had never been food motivated, not caring for cat treats or people food (except butter occasionally).
So it was not surprising that she had no interest in anything new we encouraged her to try, including the highly caloric nutritional goo for senior cats that I dabbed on her nose so she’d lick it off and learn how delicious it was. Bliss placated me by cleaning the stuff off her nose, but did not find it delicious: other than giving the gooey smears I left on a plate by her food bowl a disinterested sniff or two, she ignored them as thoroughly as only a cat can ignore something.
I’d listen hopefully to her tentative crunches as she slowly took in a few mouthfuls of cat food once or twice a day, but that clearly wasn’t enough. She grew thinner and thinner. Her abdomen was filling with fluid, which I hadn’t known until the vet pointed out the large opaque smudge on the x-ray. A smudge which had had taken over her midsection and blocked the view of her kidneys, liver, and the probable cancerous tumor growing inside her.
>^.^<
Like most cats, Bliss always did things her way, but her way was not always like most cats. She loved kids, especially our two kids, Kara and Kyle who were 10 and 8 when she came to live with us. Bliss was never afraid of them and most of the time inserted herself right in the middle of everything that was going on, even if it was only as an extremely interested observer.
When I’d take her to the vet for checkups, she’d come right out of the carrier to explore the exam room, jumping up on counters, sniffing everything to check it all out. An indoor kitty her whole life, she never seemed to mind the limits of her universe — content and at peace in her domain. Still, I wished I’d leash trained her because I think she was the kind of cat who would have thoroughly enjoyed that. She was just brave. I know I keep saying that but it was one of the things I admired most about her. Despite being so small, she knew she belonged anywhere she happened to be and was confident she could handle whatever might come up.
>^.^<
Bliss didn’t play favorites. Sometimes she slept on Kyle’s bed, sometimes she slept on Kara’s bed, sometimes on Scott and my bed. She quickly claimed Kara’s fluffy, off-white bean bag chair in the family room, so we dubbed it “the princess kitty bed.” Bliss would look at me and meow until I moved her princess kitty bed from the morning sunny patch by the sliding glass door, across the room to the afternoon sunny patch by the front window, and the next day, back across the room to the morning sunny patch.
When a targeted social media marketing campaign on my Instagram, showed me a very similarly fluffy off-white cat bed, I decided to buy it so Bliss could have a princess kitty bed in each sunny patch location, and wouldn’t have to rely on me to move it into place. But she loathed that disturbingly similar (and apparently vastly inferior) copy from the start and never once voluntarily set foot on it. When we’d gently place her on the new bed — so soft, so fluffy, and so warm from the sun — petting her and telling her how wonderful it was, she’d give us a look of disdain then saunter back over to the real princess kitty bed, not in the sun but still preferable to the abomination we were trying to pass off on her.
I washed the new bed a couple of times, thinking maybe there was some kind of new-cat-bed smell that bothered her, and when that didn’t work, covered it with the original princess kitty bed for several days, hoping the essence of the real princess kitty bed would leach into the new bed and help it become at least tolerable. But it never became tolerable. To Bliss it was a pathetic, completely sub-par, imitation.
So on second thought, she did play favorites: when it came to kitty beds — Kara’s old fluffy bean bag chair was her favorite and she’d accept no substitutes.
>^.^<
Bliss was not a lap cat. She was very social and loved being around people, greeting not only our friends and relatives when they arrived, but everyone who came to our door, including UPS drivers and solar panel sales reps. However, until the end of her life, Bliss was not a cuddler in the traditional sense. She didn’t sit with me on the couch in the family room, or curl up against us in bed at night. But she did enjoy it when Scott would scoop her up and cradle her in his arms like a baby, and if she wanted affection from me, she’d meow a few times and lead me back to the bedroom where we have a small loveseat at the foot of our bed. For some reason that little couch in our bedroom was the only place where she’d sit on my lap. So when she wanted lap time, she’d meow at me until I followed her and the instant my butt hit the love seat, she’d hop up on my lap and rub her chin against my hand.
I wish she could lead me back there right now. I’d sit with her and rub her chin as long as she wanted.
>^.^<
The house is so empty without her. I never realized how often I’d look for her or check in with her throughout the day. But since Kara and Kyle grew up and moved out, and since Scott is gone at work during the day and I work at home, Bliss was literally my companion animal — the soft, striped, wise little being with whom I spent my days. I would talk to her, consult with her, move the princess kitty bed for her, feed her, check in to see where she was and what she was doing, take photos of her and send them to the kids.
Sometimes if I was in another part of the house, she’d call to me, loudly meowing “Where are you?”
I’d call back, “Bliss! Meow-meow!” and a moment later she’d trot up to me for some chin rubs, clearly communicating through her clearly relieved kitty body language: Oh phew! I thought you’d left!
Now when I get up in the morning, or come home from an errand, or even just walk into our family room from my recording booth in the garage, I still expect her to greet me. I still look to the sunny patches, believing she’ll be there: sprawled on her side on the floor, or curled up in a tight ball on the princess kitty bed, her stripes making her look like a peaceful, furry nautilus.
I still talk to Bliss when I’m trying to get my scattered thoughts in order, or trying to decide what to do next. It’s all so ingrained and automatic. And heartbreaking, of course: the repeated realization that she’s gone now.
The sunny patches are still here and so is the princess kitty bed, but no one meows at me to move it into place.
>^.^<
Bliss didn’t seem to be suffering at the end of her life. In her last weeks, she spent most of her time on a heating pad on a cushion on the couch in the family room — still wanting to be in the center of things with Scott and me. But she was painfully thin and wobbly; she’d lost her sure-footed grace. As I mentioned earlier, Bliss didn’t sit on our laps as a rule, but as her health declined, her lap-siting boundary changed, and she became all for it. I had to be careful to set everything I needed on the table by the couch before I sat down because as soon as I got settled, she’d abandon her cushion and beeline towards me, somewhat shaky but very determined to lie on me: much better than a heating pad, since I loved her and could rub her chin.
>^.^<
I started this essay a couple of days after she died, and have now worked on it sporadically for over two Bliss-less weeks. My fragile cracked shell is strengthening. I’m no longer bereft, although I still tear up over her and still expect to see her in the sunny patches, before remembering I won’t. Except in my memories. But my memories are vivid.
It’s remarkable that something as ordinary and commonplace as a small, short-haired, tabby cat — an abandoned barn kitten, the last of the litter even, who didn’t do anything that we are taught to think of as important — could make such a big impact. But she sure did. And true, she wasn’t important to anyone but my family and me, but does the scale of importance matter? I don’t think so. Bliss’s significance was huge regardless: a little ball of love and an enormous presence, in gray-striped feline form.
The level of my grief has surprised me — the level of my love for her bigger than I knew. But I’m equally grateful for her — grateful for loving her so much and for the opportunity to share life with that quirky, adorable, wise little creature.
Bliss the tabby cat: my super cute, incredibly curious, and oh-so-courageous role-model, who knew the necessity of sunny patches and who lived in the moment, always on her terms.
