Playa the Cat Has No Mean Bones

We almost kill him on Valentine’s Day.

It would be so poetic, to euthanize our beloved pet, as an act of love, on the Day of Love. I make an appointment for at-home euthanasia, in the comfort of our living room. Maybe in the papasan chair in the living room, where our cat liked to take his afternoon naps, before he got sick. Or maybe in the guest bedroom upstairs, which I dream might one day become a baby room. Our cat’s spirit could keep watch over our future unborn child. I delude myself with romance.

I talk to the death doctor’s assistant over the phone. 10am. Communal cremation. Yes, we would like the complimentary clay paw print. No, we do not need his ashes returned.

Playa gets sick so fast. One day, he’s chowing down on turkey and tuna. The next day, he stops eating entirely. He turns yellow. He loses his balance. I find something called the “Feline Grimace Scale” on the internet. Playa has all the signs of acute pain: ears flattened, eyes squinted, muzzle tensed, whiskers straight, head tilted down. We take him to the ER on a Sunday. He stays for three nights in intensive care, getting an IV drip of fluids and antibiotics.

We hope that going home might accelerate the healing process. It doesn’t work. His appetite never comes back. His lethargy worsens. Ultrasounds show he has a bile duct obstruction. His gallbladder, pancreas and intestines are all jacked up. Inflammation. Possibly cancer. We won’t know until we get in there. So many doctors. How many humans does it take to save a cat’s life? The thought of cutting open his furry belly makes me sick to my stomach.

We opt for abdominal surgery that Friday. I give him a pep talk first, recording him on camera, for posterity. You’re going to feel so much better after this, okay? We’ll watch this video when you come out the other side, and you’ll be so glad it’s over.

I’m so nervous when I drop him off. I lean into his cat carrier, while we’re waiting in the hospital lobby. He reaches his head towards mine and gives me two kisses, one on either side of my mouth, and a love bite on the chin. I think he’s trying to communicate. Maybe: Don’t worry, everything is going to be OK. Maybe: I’m scared, don’t leave me. Maybe: I love you, too. I don’t know this, yet, but this is the last time I will ever feel his tongue on my skin.

In the days after surgery, things seem to be going well. His bilirubin levels drop from 12 to 7 to 5. He’s looking good; doing better than average. But then they plateau at 4. Bilirubin levels for a healthy cat should be under 1. Something’s not right. I visit him in the hospital. Nurses say he’s been complaining. How does a cat complain? I bring him his favorite little box, for comfort. He immediately curls up in it, recognizing the scent, the shape, and the texture of the familiar cardboard. It brings me peace knowing that he’ll have a piece of home in his hospital cage. I come back for a visit the next day, and the box is gone. This makes me want to cry. He accidentally peed on it, so we threw it away. More complications: They find free fluid in his abdomen. My heart sinks. Biopsy results come back: no cancer. I breathe a sigh of relief. It’s emotional whiplash.

Playa finally comes home four nights after surgery. We put him in “the baby room” — a spare room for a human baby we don’t have. It’s primarily where I do yoga and consult tarot cards — my healing space. My cat, the patient, has a feeding tube lodged in the side of his neck, vining its way down his esophagus to his stomach. My husband Nader and I take turns administering drugs, water, and gruel in between Zoom meetings for work. Each feeding takes about 90 minutes, from start to finish, prepping ingredients, plunging 1ml of food per minute, or as much as Playa will tolerate without squirming or smacking his lips, flushing the tube with tepid water, to keep it unclogged, cleaning syringes and supplies.

The guy’s on a diet of rabbit meat and pea protein. I use my immersion blender to pulverize a can of wet food with filtered water. It smells bitter, powdery. I store the gruel in our fridge in a little glass pudding jar. When it’s feeding time, I submerge the jar in hot water, heating the sludge to lukewarm. There are feedings every four hours, with a regimen of medications in between, some every 8 hours, some every 12, some every 24. The hospital discharge instructions tell me to give 0.4ml, give 0.5ml, give 0.7ml, give 1 tablet (crushed and mixed with water), give 0.2ml, give 1 teaspoon, give 1 prefilled syringe, give 1.3ml, give with food, shake well… I lose track of which drug is which. I have to write everything down on paper — or else I might kill him and it will all be my fault.

I keep a tally: 4 antibiotics (to prevent infection and inflammation), 2 anti-nausea meds (to help with the side effects of the antibiotics), 1 prokinetic (to help with gastrointestinal “motility” — to help move shit along, literally), a bottle of potassium gluconate (for basic survival), 1 appetite stimulant (to coax him back into eating food on his own), and 1 antiviral drug (for his herpes, which has flared up again from all the stress of illness). He’s supposed to be eating 70ml of gruel per feeding by now. But he’s only able to stomach 15ml before he throws it all up. He’s foaming at the mouth. Is this dying?

I am wetting cotton balls with warm water to sop up the discharge from his watery eyes. I am tilting his face back to squeeze saline drops into his clogged nostrils. I am taking tissues to wipe strings of saliva from his chin and whiskers. I am staying up until 3am and waking up at 6am, to make sure I don’t screw up our new feeding schedule. I am cleaning up vomit from the litter box. Vomit is not a good sign. I am yelling at my husband. I am panicking.

Playa has a follow-up appointment at the hospital on Super Bowl Sunday. His bilirubin levels have shot back up to 12. I’m so sorry. The doctor doesn’t have much to offer. We’re back to square one.

We decide to keep him in the hospital overnight, in a last-ditch effort to cure him. As we’re waiting in the lobby—yet again—a pregnant red-garbed Rihanna sings “We Found Love in a Hopeless Place” on the TV monitors overhead. It’s the Super Bowl Halftime Show, and I’m stroking Playa’s face, tears streaming down my face. Hi baby, I love you, I love you so much. I don’t know who won the Super Bowl that night.

Playa gets discharged and the doctor is prepared to send us home with just a small vial of potassium and a couple doses of buprenorphine — a morphine-like painkiller — thinking that our little guy won’t last much longer than 24 hours. We even ask the nurses to leave his IV catheter in, so that it will be easier and more convenient to put him down at home, when the time comes. It’s more predictable that way.

But my husband suddenly changes his mind and decides to fight for our cat’s life. He still has a chance. Nader outlines a new scenario with the internal medicine doctor, who has been treating Playa for the past two weeks. Give us all the meds.

We have a new plan. Plan B. Plan Do Whatever It Takes. Plan No Regrets. Plan Fuck It, We Have Pet Insurance, Let’s Max Out the Annual Limit. Plan Try Everything Until Your Heart Breaks.

The doctor affirms our plan. If he’s more of the same — lethargic, quiet, not keeping his food down — then I don’t think it would be fair to keep going, okay? But if he improves overnight and you decide to keep treating him at home, then make sure to come back to the hospital tomorrow, so we can take the IV catheter out. It’s really important that the catheter doesn’t stay in there for too long, okay? And we’ll show you how to give him fluids under the skin, so you can hydrate him at home. Okay?

Okay. Sounds like a plan.

Playa was not part of my original plan. I had lost another cat, Charlie, to lymphoma, back when I lived in DC. I didn’t think I could handle another loss. But 5 months after moving to my new city of Los Angeles, I started to feel lonely, aimless. My one-bedroom apartment felt empty, even with all my clutter. I thought becoming a foster mom to a pair of needy kittens would bring me a sense of companionship and purpose, so I went to the local animal shelter, seeking to fill that emotional void.

The shelter didn’t have my ideal pair of kittens. Instead, they had a five-year-old tomcat with feline herpes and an upper respiratory infection. He was on lysine supplements to boost his immunity. They said I only needed to commit to fostering him for three weeks, after which I was free to return him. I gave the guy a chance.

It was Labor Day, during a heat wave. I took him back home to my apartment in Sawtelle and dipped his paws in water, to help him cool down. He laid belly-down against the cheap laminate flooring under my bed, panting. I had never seen a cat pant. I was now responsible for another living creature.

I had already made plans to meet up with my new friends for a beach hang at Playa del Rey. I crossed my fingers and hoped I wouldn’t come home to a dead dehydrated cat. First day of foster care already felt like a fail.

Luckily, when I returned at sundown, my new roommate was alive and affectionate. He was so sweet, it was no wonder the shelter named him Angel (I like to think it was the Spanish pronunciation, ángel — somehow sounded more masculine.) After getting more acquainted with him that night, I decided to change his name to Playa, the Spanish word for “beach,” just like Playa del Rey, where I had spent my carefree afternoon. Also, I guess, like Black Rock Desert’s playa, an ancient lake flat made of alkaline dust where Burning Man hippies and tech moguls were coincidentally partying that same weekend.

The name Playa seemed fitting for my new little angel: his eyes were blue like the water and his fur was white like the sand. I found out he was Flamepoint Siamese. Cream body, red-pointed nose. Lovable. Intelligent. A rare breed, in high demand, expensive.

Years later, when I finally moved out of Sawtelle, one of the movers asked me how much my white cat cost because he looked so “fancy.” Only $25. I adopted him from the shelter. At the end of his life, Playa’s vet bills totaled more than $23,000. My fancy cat showed me that love comes with a high cost — and it’s not glamorous. Thank God I paid for pet insurance.

The night before Valentine’s Day, our sick cat poops in his litter box for the first time in 10 days (actually, he misses the actual box and it falls clumsily on the floor — but close enough.) A nice, solid turd. We cheer for him! Maybe that last-ditch-effort overnight stay in the hospital really helped! His body might actually be working again! Despite the ugly stiff collar that protects the feeding tube jammed into his esophagus. Despite the stupid vinyl bootie that the doctors strapped onto his foot to protect his IV catheter.

The three of us — my husband, my cat, and myself — sleep together in our baby room without a baby, on a low-lying futon, where there’s no risk of Playa falling off a regular-sized bed. The cat lays between our legs, purring for the first time in days.

First a poop, now a purr. All good signs.

At breakfast the next morning, my husband makes a request. Call off the death doctor. It’s Valentine’s Day, and this is my gift.

The next few days are a blur, playing on loop in my memory like cinemagraphs.

We remove his IV catheter. We learn how to hydrate him with subcutaneous fluids, administered through a needle under his skin. I accidentally poke my finger with the same needle that stabs my cat’s neck. Playa and I are blood brothers now.

Playa stops licking anything, even himself. No grooming, no meowing, no purring, no drinking, no eating. He’s a shell of himself.

One day, he gets diarrhea. He spins around a few times in his litter box, getting it all over the place, stepping in it. It’s dribbling down his backside, his hind legs, including on his stupid vinyl bootie. He flops down on the floor, his face landing in his own waste. For a cat, this is the ultimate loss of dignity. I take alcohol wipes to clean as much as I can from his stupid bootie, to keep his catheter clean. I take hypoallergenic wet wipes to clean his white paws and his cream-colored face. I take a sponge and dip it in a bowl of warm water to try to clean between his legs—but there’s too much. I take a blow dryer with the diffuser on, to dry him gently, but he doesn’t like the heat or the sound. Everything is sticky. Everything smells like medicine. As soon as I wipe everything off, there’s more. This happens five more times that day. I’m sorry, boy.

At night, I go to my baby-yoga-cat-healing room and pull some tarot cards, hoping that they’ll give me guidance for how to deal with Playa’s sickness. I pull three cards. The first is the 5 of Pentacles, symbolizing hardship, misfortune, ill-tidings. Uh-oh. The second card takes my breath away — it’s the Death card, symbolizing rebirth, clearing away the past, letting go of old hurts, transformation of the self. I sob, knowing that an ending is coming. The third card is the 6 of Cups, symbolizing childish innocence, playing games, frivolity, being unattached. I don’t want to believe the tarot cards.

The next day, I’m still looking for answers. I pull an oracle card from another deck. Maybe this one will tell me something different. The message could not be more clear: I take delight in life, particularly life that is unexpected, where new life springs from old, and that which seems to have ended is resurrected into new form. I am bringing you a resurrection now. My hands tremble. I believe the cards this time.

All these silly superstitions, my belief in the supernatural. They’re harmless, like horoscopes at the back of the newspaper or fortune cookies — meaningless signs to make sense of the incomprehensible. They say spiritual people are happier in life, but I don’t remember the last time my heart felt so heavy. I use magic as a way of exerting control. I also use self-blame. I should have kept the house cleaner to prevent infection. I should have fed him a different brand of food to avoid inflammation. I shouldn’t have left him alone all those times we went on vacation — maybe the stress made him sick. Maybe I gave him too much cisapride — that damn prokinetic that gave him diarrhea. Maybe he didn’t need surgery. But self-blame doesn’t really work, either. I still have no control.

Playa starts exhibiting strange behavior. He crouches over his stainless steel water bowl, staring into it, breathing, letting his whiskers touch the cold water, but not taking a single sip. He stays like that for a while, maybe an hour. This happens several times throughout the night. He’s also restless, changing positions constantly, as though he can’t get comfortable. I listen to his body language. He’s in pain.

In the morning, after a night of insomnia, I decide it’s time. I can’t stand to torture him for one more day. I wish I could kill him instantly, on the spot, on my own. But I have to make an appointment with a professional. Fuck the at-home euthanasia service—they’re fully booked today, like a goddamn spa. Thankfully, the neighborhood animal clinic has an opening at 2pm. I spend the next 5 hours clearing the house of all evidence of Playa. His litter box, litter liners, bags of litter, nail clippers, flea medicine, shampoo, combs, leashes, harnesses, cat toothpaste, cat toothbrushes, food dispensers, water bowls, wet food, kibble, treats, toys, scratching posts, bedding, blankets, cat nip, medicine, syringes, surgery e-collars — all of it goes into three piles: trash, donate, return. I don’t want any evidence of Playa when I come home. I want him to be fully gone. The only thing I want to feel is his spirit; I don’t want reminders of his sick, dying body. There was a time in his life with me where I fed him so much premium cat food that he grew to a hefty 15 pounds. Now he’s down to only 8 pounds, skin and bones.

While I’m cleaning out his belongings, he walks into our food pantry under the stairs in the kitchen for the first time ever. He hides, waiting. I bring the cat carrier towards him; he steps in, casually. This is him telling me he’s ready to go.

We’re down to the last hour together. I walk around the whole house — inside and out — with a stick of lit incense, chanting. Thank you for everything, Playa. Protect us. Another one of my superstitions. I am summoning his spirit to get ready for its next adventure.

I bring Playa outside on the front porch for one final morning sunbathe. He lifts his head to smell the crisp air. I tell him to enjoy it.

My husband comes with me to the clinic. Hi, we’re here to kill our cat. They let us take our time. They close at 6pm. That’s 4 hours from now. Plenty of time, and yet, somehow not enough.

My husband asks for Playa to have painkillers first, so the creature can have a few moments of bliss before the doctor euthanizes him. In the meantime, I recite comments out loud from the Best Friends Animal Society volunteers who wrote notes on Playa’s original adoption papers. It’s a eulogy. I pretend my cat understands English:

Friendly, social, playful, happy boy. Relaxed, silly, and confident cutie. Adorable, and bursting with love!

Easy-going, gentle, affectionate, attractive, goofy, a rockstar cat, adventurous.

Personality-wise, he is Mr. Personality! He is friendly with people and cats, and wants to be a part of everything. Just an easy, fantastic cat!

It’s true. He is the easiest, sweetest cat. My husband and I reminded each other of this simple fact all the time. Playa has no mean bones. He never bit, scratched, or hissed at us — not even once. He slept at the foot of our bed every night, and every morning, gave me kisses on my face. When he meowed, it sounded like a song. He demanded treats every evening at 6pm.We threw them across the hardwood floor so he could chase them down, like a real predator, even though I never saw him kill a living thing, not even a bug. He loved watching Netflix with us. Sometimes, he would get annoyed if we didn’t assume our positions on our couches by 9pm. We trained him to be a couch potato. Occasionally, during energy bursts, he chased Nader around the house in circles, until his tail got all puffy and his face got all weird and elongated. He made my husband break out into hysterical laughter.

We add our own praises to the living eulogy. Thank you for everything, Playa. You helped me grow up. I didn’t realize caretaking for a dying cat had this effect on me until I say the words out loud.

Thank you for being my co-pilot. Nader pets Playa, tenderly. I cry for the loss of my husband’s best friend and coworker, the cat who always curled up next to his computer while he was working from home, like that cute scene from that YouTube video — “lofi hip hop radio”— showing an animé girl studying at her desk with her animé cat on the windowsill beside her, looking out at the animé rain. They were such a vibe.

After the speeches, we sit together in silence, our eyes closed, drifting into a half-nap, listening to each other breathe. Playa rests his head on my arm. Everything suddenly feels peaceful.

I look at my husband. Ready? He nods. The vet enters the room.

It’s what they used on Michael Jackson. She injects heavy-duty sedative into Playa’s hind leg. He flinches and turns around, like something bit him. Yeah, it feels funny, doesn’t it? The doctor gives him the trip of his life. Five seconds after the first shot, Playa’s head flops down and becomes puddy in the palm of my hand. You can go now. We don’t need you anymore. The doctor injects something else, the last drug. Thirty seconds after that, I feel my cat’s soul leave his sick body. His eyes stay open, pupils dilated. Wow. I gasp, in awe, still petting his sweet face. Yeah, his heart stopped. The doctor confirms what I already know.

His dead body looks so cute and cuddly, finally relaxed, after weeks of being hunched over and clenching in pain. I keep kissing his face. His matted fur starts to smell more like my tears, less like medicine. With blood no longer pumping through his veins, I finally notice how jaundiced he became. His eye lids, paws, inner ears, gums — they’re as yellow as lemon rinds. I want to squeeze his belly, but don’t want to disturb the stitches, even though he can’t feel anything anymore. I wish I could have bathed him properly before he left. I don’t take photos of his dead body. It feels too sacred.

We’ve been here for 58 minutes. Nader has been keeping a timer on his phone since we arrived. We’ll leave when it’s been an hour. I need the stopwatch to tell us when to go. Without the stopwatch, we might stay forever.

After the appointment, we drive to a luxury hotel on the cliffs of Palos Verdes with a beautiful view of the sunset. We haven’t eaten anything all day, so we order a chocolate caramel cheesecake bar, for comfort. I nearly forget to pay. I can’t hear anything the cashier is telling me. I just want to go home, but I’m scared what an empty house will feel like.

We steal a succulent clipping from the resort’s immaculate landscaping. It’s a small, battered agave plant, with an overgrown stem. Imperfect, like Playa. We’ll plant it in our succulent garden. I’m grasping for any symbolism of prolonging life.

I create an altar for our dead cat. I don’t know how else to process this, except for embracing my silly superstitious beliefs. There’s a framed photo of Playa being squeezed in a tight embrace by Nader and I, smiling, during the height of the pandemic, when we were stuck in a one-bedroom apartment. Below the photo, I light a pair of tealight candles every night, around the time Playa would normally beg for treats. I let them burn until there’s no wax left. Usually, I’d use a bowl of dry rice to hold an incense stick, but I use a few scoopfuls of clean cat litter in a small glass jar, instead. The same glass jar that stored his rabbit gruel. It makes me laugh. What a tribute.

Three days after Playa’s death, I go for a midday walk at the beach. I find a heart-shaped rock. I bring it home and place it in our succulent garden, next to Playa’s misshapen plant.

I write a letter to my future self: The death of one thing leads to the birth of another. Playa will teach you that. His energy will be recycled. He’ll show up another way. He’ll protect you. Remember him for the sweet, cute, happy cat he was, not the dying, sick, miserable creature who couldn’t breathe, who stopped purring, meowing, grooming, drinking, eating. He stopped working, and left, to make space for something else. I hope once you read this letter, you’ve filled that void with something else, worthy of his spirit, his kind, gentle, bursting-with-love spirit. Take care of yourself.

One week after his death, I stop lighting the candles.