The Night Kira Died
A horror story with a happy ending. So far.
I’ve had a lot of cats.
Lil’ Bit caught bats in the house.
Kira can’t catch a fly to save her life. She’ll swat at it if it flies by her head but that’s all she can be troubled to do.
Mystic was my little lovey and she gave me two beautiful babies. No notes.
Baby was my favorite and gave me 16 wonderful years, but she was a Blue Point Himalayan, so she was beautiful and the bitch knew it. She’d follow me around and bite my ankles for sport, and I’d just let her, because she was too beautiful to punish. and. so. soft.
Kira will bite me if I’m having a meltdown, like “you better get it together woman I count on you for survival and you can’t die!” Or she loves me and just wants me to be ok. IDK. TBD.
One night I was violently crying after my step-dad died and I came across a Christmas name tag he’d written my kids names on for a present. I lost it in the hallway, on my knees, and Kira bit the shit out of me.
Drew blood.
I went out and bought her $60 worth of bougie shit the very next day becasue I decided she thought I was having a seizure and she suddenly became my service animal. So I err on the side of, she loves me.
Lookin’ on the bright side.
Ember wasn’t that pleasant either, but I loved her.
Wednesday. Oh, Wednesday. How I miss Wednesday. She galloped like a horse, fetched, and caught the mice running across my feet in the kitchen.
Yeah, that’s how bad the mice problem was.
I also found her in the fridge as a kitten one morning so she was definitely cold weather trained AND she could turn off the ceiling fan when I asked her. But she was a biter and it was annoying.
I secretly adored her though, but we don’t talk about Wednesday.
Armin was my only boy since Lil’ Bit. My kids brought him home off the street, just like I did Mystic. But Armin pissed in my beloved lemon and lime trees and killed them and was worse than ANY toddler, and I’ve met A LOT of toddlers in my lifetime. Dude climbed my curtains with his claws like he was at war. I volunteered at a pet rescue until I could rehome him. That’s the only way my conscious would let me live it down.
I was done with boys after that. One and done. I don’t need that mess.
I wanted a cat like me. Not too fast, kinda old, really tired and with a few extra pounds and a lil’ bit of ‘tude.
That’s when I found Kira, volunteering at the pet rescue. I fostered her for one week. I took her back to Petco for “viewing day” and as soon as I put her in the cage she turned around and showed nothin’ but her big fat ass to the crowd.
That’s how I knew I found my girl.
She had me at “Fuck you.”
You’re comin’ home with me!
You’re free now, Margo.
But we gotta change that name.
Fast forward 14 months later…
I had just had foot surgery. I was supposed to be non weight bearing for 6 weeks. 10 days later this bitch decides to have a stroke. One minute she was fine. The next my mom and I are watching her back legs stop working and her slowly seemingly slip into a coma. I had some Gabapentin I’d read helps with pain for cats, fully expecting her to die that night. 3 days before my son’s 17th birthday and almost exactly 2 months to the day they lost thier cat, Oreo, at their dad’s. The kids and I picked out Oreo before the divorce so that one hurt too.
Both Girls.
Both Tuxedo Cats.
Both Sturdy Girls.
On one foot, crawling up the stairs, I had to lift 16lbs from one stair to the next for 16 stairs and pick her up and put her in bed. She was nonresponsive by the time I got her there. She was curled up next to me. I was too high to cry because I’d just had surgery and those pain killers were busy killing pain, and I was so overwhelmed at the audacity of the universe to do this to me and my kids that I didn’t shed a tear. I sat up all night wondering how I was going to haul 16lbs down 16 stairs to the basement, another 15 stairs, to the backyard and bury a cat with a tiny garden shovel and one fucking foot and explain to son why two of his cats died within two months of each other for no apparent reason. I was planning for a very somber 17th birthday I’d have to throw three days later. All of this going through my head at 1 o’clock in the morning.
The horrendous pain of it all is still indescribable.
Physical
Emotional
Spiritual
All of it. All at once.
I fell asleep at 3am fully expecting to wake up to a dead cat next to me. Imagine thinking your’re sleeping next to a dead body. That.
Around 7 or 8am I woke up to find a curled up motionless cat. I violently shook her to see if she was stiff. She was warm. She was soft, and very much not dead. She opened her little drugged up eyes, yawned, and slowly but very surely got up on her wobbly legs, and stepped over me to jump off the bed. She didn’t collapse, but she wasn’t a ballerina about it either.
Her legs were weak and they buckled under her.
Then she stood up on all fours, shook it off and sauntered out of the bedroom like nothing had happened, down the 16 stairs she couldn’t manage not 12 hours earlier, and into the kitchen to grab a bite to eat.
I had my mom sleep over because “what the actual fuck” and I didn’t think my sanity would survive the night by myself. I really didn’t.
My mom, who slept on the couch in the living room, saw Kira come down the stairs and walk past her to her food bowl. She thought she’d just witnessed some kind of miracle. After her breakfast she jumped up on the couch to her window perch to partake in her favortie pasttime, watching the porch squirrels.
I thought (selfishly and guiltily), “Are you fucking kidding me?! Who does this bitch think she is?!”
Kira just made me walk through the darkest night of my soul and just shakes it off like a bad hangover?!
I don’t think so.
And I was so scared she was going to do too much at once and blow another fucking gasket. Or whatever the hell that was.
So I drugged her again. And myself.
One for me. One for her.
“Go to sleep. Sleep it off you fucking freak of nature.”
I needed a fucking nap.
Or some peace.
Or to put my tore ass foot up because I was also not a ballerina about it and I spent all night walking on a foot with three fresh screws in it to save my cat’s life.
I’m basically a hero.
Anyway, if you’re going through the darkest night of your soul, if you can be anyone, be like Kira.
Slip into a nice cozy little coma for a few hours, then get back up and shake that shit off. Maybe eat a little something, and then get on with it.
You can do it.
If she can do it, you can do it.
Proof of Life. So far
10/1/2026
Love you, Kira.
