Losing a Friend

Where are you my love?
I miss you so
I love you more
Than you'll ever know
Now my heart breaks
Because you're not here
And I'm lost in my life
Without you near

Each day I pray
For a new start
And God takes away
Some pain in my heart
But sometimes at night
When I see the stars
My thoughts again find you
Wherever you are.

You're not so far
Sometimes it seems
I see your face
Inside my sweet dreams
But when I awake
I hurt anew
My dreams in the real world
I can't share with you.

So now I pray
Dear God let me see
What I'm to take
From your memory
Lord I'm so tired
I feel so alone
So hold me beside you
Till Your love I know.

-Without You (for Shasta the Samoyed Wonder Dog), 1998

It had been 19 years since I lost a pet. It doesn't get any easier.

The thing is, I was never even a cat person. At least, I never was until Sebastian.

Cats are selfish, standoffish, and disloyal. They're aloof, attitudinal, and mysterious, unable to be counted on from moment to moment, as likely to curl up and want endless snuggling as to hiss and walk away. Cats are dramatic and high maintenance.

Except Sebastian was none of those things.

He was sweet and loving. He never turned down an offer to be petted, and never wanted alone time, unless he was sleeping, and usually even then, he wanted to be in contact with a body part of one of his humans.

He had every positive quality people associate with dogs, and he also pooped in a box and covered it. Except for his excessive ability to shed on anything within the same area code, he was the perfect cat.

Sebastian was my wife's cat when we were dating. He was fluffy and sweet and loved plopping down in my lap and getting stroked. I had a job back then that required wearing a suit every day, and he put my dry cleaner's kids through college. I eventually got my own cat, Trouble, in the hopes that giving him a friend would result in diverting his attention enough to get some relief to my cleaning bills, but instead I just doubled the odds that I'd end up with something fluffy shedding all over my clothes.

Sebastian went through a lot with us. He was there when Liz was diagnosed with diabetes. He was there when we got married (Well, not literally. But perhaps we should have invited him--he would have looked nice in a top hat.) He lived through houses in Georgia, Alabama, Missouri, Tennessee and two in California, and a whole lot of moves in the process. Our career paths have led us to start over in new places so many times, but he was the constant voice telling us we'd make it through as long as we petted him. I'm not sure if that was actually true, but that's certainly what he thought.

He was my friend when I was sad, and my companion when I wanted to celebrate. He was a part Ragdoll breed, so he went limp when you picked him up, making him an amazing dancer and puppet.

Last year, he even tried to play doctor, gently headbutting my left temple after MS took my eyesight on that side. I still don't understand how he knew. But somehow, whatever we needed, that's what he tried to give. He sat in our laps through crappy jobs, professional success, family drama, answered prayers, shattered dreams, and friends who let us down.

Sebastian never did. For 17 years (16 for me) he was our dependable friend who didn't care if you got passed over for a promotion, or if our emotions didn't make sense. He wasn't critical if I wrote a bad brief, or if Liz didn't see enough clients in a week. He was unconcerned if I wrote a bad blog post or if Liz painted her nails.

If a lap was available, that was good enough. It was the lowest pressure friendship I ever had, and he's been there for our entire professional adult lives.

We used to joke that Sebastian was actually Aslan, the divine lion from the C.S. Lewis Narnia series who comes down to the surface and helps the characters through their adventures (Yes, Trouble is the Witch, and they often hung out in our Wardrobe). In addition to his long, flowing mane, sometimes he almost seemed to have supernatural abilities.

For one, he had an inexplicable talent for jumping from the floor onto the bed and landing directly on my crotch.

Two, and perhaps relatedly, he always knew when one of his people were in pain. He would try to help.

He would wake Liz up at night when her blood sugar was low and meow until she ate something, and then he would stay up with her until she stabilized. When I broke my knee, he passed up his normal lounging spots to sit beside it, trying to impart some positive feline energy. For the most part, Trouble ended up claiming my lap and Sebastian gravitated to Liz's, but the week I was on best rest after my spinal tap Sebastian never left my side. If I had worked a 12-hour day, he would plop in my lap and help me unwind, ensuring another trip to the drycleaner in the process.

He wanted to solve our problems even until the end. Our vet had noticed that he had a fast heartbeat, so we took him in about two months ago for some testing. He was 17 and seemed to be doing mostly fine, so we thought that if he could stay on top of the heart issue we might have him into his 20's. But the vet's diagnostic imaging found a growing tumor inside of him, and he warned us that Sebastian was on his ninth life, with somewhere between a few weeks and few months left. We were distraught when we got home. Sebastian sensed the mood was off, and purred and gave us headbutts trying to cheer us up from mourning him.

That was just who he was.

He was also a talker. He would meow at me every morning, just to say hello after a night of speechless sleep. Soon, I decided to turn our morning chats into the type of intellectual debates a cat of his sophistication would appreciate. He would meow, I would ask him if he was concerned about North Korea. He would meow back the moment I stopped talking, in a tone indicating his concern, and I would ask him what he would do about it. He would respond back again, with an enlightening meow, usually making a point I hadn't previously considered. These were how our mornings went.

I wish he had been President.

I also know he wouldn't want us moping over him now. By the end, he had shrunk from a 12-pound majestic fluffball with a lion-like mane, to a six-pound shadow who lost his balance all the time. It was a little bit sad, and not only because MS gives me the same symptoms of balance issues and weight loss. It was almost as though he was trying to take them from me by sharing in them.

I bet he would have if he could.

It's nice to think that he's himself again. It's nice to think that his long flowing mane is back, that he walks without losing his balance, and that he's eating without restriction on the other side. It's nice to think that he won't need steroids any more to breathe.

It's nice to think that when I see him again, I'll be able to see him with my left eye, and we'll both be whole again.

Until then, I don't know how I'm going to make it through. But I know he's looking down now, cheering me on, in between his snacks of chicken.

I can't wait to see him again. I'm having a hard time making sense of the world and I could really use his advice.