Remembering Potsie’s gift to me
Last week, my family and I made the decision every pet owner dreads most: to let their beloved animal go.
After days of back-and-forth — involving copious tears, the ordering of numerous medications and new types of food, frenzied online research and phone calls, nearly round-the-clock monitoring and lengthy deliberations — we finally agreed it was time to say goodbye to Potsie, our cat of 18 years.
Everything had happened so fast that we had a hard time understanding how we’d gotten here.
For years, Potsie — a beautiful tortoiseshell with pale green eyes and an orange stripe down the middle of her face — was as energetic as a kitten, hunting birds and squirrels, scaling enormous trees, climbing onto neighbors’ roofs, chasing feather boas that we pulled around the house.
Sure, she’d slowed down and developed some health challenges as she’d gotten older, but she was still herself.
So how was it possible that in the span of a few weeks, she had suddenly gotten so weak she could barely walk and could no longer enjoy all the things she loved so much — like jumping up on a side table to accompany my parents while they drank their morning coffee and sunning herself in the garden and sassing anyone who went into the kitchen for food, even if all they were doing was boiling water?
We wanted to believe there was something we could do to reverse her decline.
A few years earlier, her sister — a gorgeous, sweet calico — had bounced back from the brink of kidney disease, and we got another 18 months with her before she died of tongue cancer.
But, the day after Potsie’s 18th birthday, we came to grips with the fact that we had to let her go.
As we drove to the vet, sobbing, we wondered if we were making the right decision, if we should turn around, if we were giving up too early.
But looking at her face, at the expression in her eyes, it was clear: Her little 4-pound body had had enough. She needed to be freed from her pain. I understood this intellectually. But my body could not physically process the shock of the instantaneous separation.
How do you account for the sudden and final absence of a creature who has been with you for two-thirds of your life, who loved you unconditionally, who never lashed out at you, who would always welcome you home no matter how long you had been gone?
How do you go about the daily business of life when you’re constantly aware of a brutal new emptiness, a brutal new silence?
How do you cope with that kind of pain?
On top of the specific pain of losing Potsie, there was also the general pain of loss — a reminder of the casualties incurred during the slow, inexorable march of life.
With both of my childhood cats gone, I felt like an entire chapter of my life had closed, pushing me further away from youth and deeper into adulthood.
Yet something happened on the night of Potsie’s death that made these losses a little easier to bear.
While waiting with Potsie in the vet’s exam room, we asked her to send us a sign once she safely ascended to heaven.
I asked her for a rainbow, though I didn’t expect to see one in California in the middle of August.
But that night, as we sat in the family room talking, I noticed the sky was glowing a deep, luminous orange.
We stepped outside and stared in shock. Arcing over our backyard was not one rainbow but two, their colors gleaming in the last rays of the sun.
Moments later, raindrops began to fall in a rare light summer storm. Relief crashed over me.
Potsie was telling us that she was OK, that she loved us, that we had made the right decision, that she would watch over us.
That she was at peace.
It’s true that the double rainbow may have had nothing to do with Potsie, but it is difficult to interpret as anything other than a message from her — and from her sister — with whom she was now reunited. So deep was our love, so tight our bond, that anything was possible.
For those who don’t have pets, this might seem a little out there.
We’ve all heard stories of devotion tipping into the absurd, like pet owners who build dog mansions worth tens of thousands of dollars.
And society still looks askance at certain kinds of pet owners, especially single women considered “crazy cat ladies.”
The implication is that people use pets as crutches, as inferior replacements for their lack of human relationships.
But our relationships with animals are not intrinsically any less valuable or meaningful than our relationships with people.
Indeed, during the pandemic, many people realized they were missing the type of love and companionship that all too often only animals can provide: the unconditional kind.
I, too, adopted a pet during the pandemic: an adorable orange-and-white cat with a heart-shaped patch on her back.
When I brought her home on visits, Potsie accepted her with the same gentle spirit with which she’d accepted all of us for 18 years — the kind of spirit that never loses its strength, that never wavers, that never dies.