Still Too Soon
We had to let Sammie go last Wednesday.
The lump first appeared on her nose sometime in the Summer of 2024. It was small. You could miss it if you didn’t know her face.
The vet did a biopsy. Melanoma. We were told the median survival time was 6 months.
Over the next 18, we did everything we could to make her life comfortable. When the tumor grew too large, we’d have it debulked. When she couldn’t clean herself anymore, we brushed her and gave her baths. In the end, we had to hand feed her when the tumor, now inoperable, got in the way of eating on her own.
But we couldn’t feed her enough that way, and she was losing weight. The tumor was getting larger and soon would spread into her bones. Although she was always happy to cuddle, in the last week she spent most of her hours curled up in a heated bed, tolerating a pain she had no way to avoid.
She couldn’t use words to tell us her wishes. We had to guess. But if I were her, I’d want to be spared the pain and indignity that so often comes at the end. So we made the decision to let her go.
We made some art with her. We said our good-byes. And then, on a sunny afternoon, the vet let her slip off, sitting in my lap, purring to the last.
I adopted Sammie with my first wife, Sarah.
Sammie came to us from the SPCA. She picked us out. She jumped on Sarah and began snuggling immediately. I filled out the paperwork while she sat on Sarah’s shoulder.
Sammie was born on Halloween, so her full name is Samhain. But, as a joke, since many people mispronounce Samhain as /sam-hane/, we shortened it to Sammie.
As cat dynamics shifted in the house and Sammie grew from kitten to young cat, I became her favorite. I’d come home from work and she’d snuggle with me as I played on the computer or watched baseball. Many nights we’d fall asleep together on the couch with the TV still on.
After Sarah and I split, I moved to California, and Sammie came with me. The vet gave her Valium to fly. It made her extremely cute, extremely floppy, and extremely cuddly.
Sammie and I made a new life in Berkeley. We developed a routine. I’d wake up early and come home late from work. She’d climb in and snuggle with me in bed. If I played video games, she’d curl up on the computer, enjoying its warmth. If people came over, she’d wander out and demand their attention. I tried to take her outside a few times to enjoy the weather, but she wasn’t having it, so an indoor cat she stayed.
We moved several times to different houses with different people. Sammie loved everyone she met. And then she met Joy. The first night Joy slept over, Sammie snuggled her all night. Sammie was sure that Joy should be my wife.
In her last two years, Sammie got to know the fog of San Francisco after we moved to a house atop Twin Peaks. She looked forward to the afternoons when the clouds parted, the sun streamed in, and she could stretch out and bask in its warm, amber glow.
Now she’s cold. Very cold.
Like me and my wife, Sammie was signed up for cryonics. This is her new forever home:
I don’t know if we’ll ever get to see Sammie again. Maybe one day we’ll have the technology to bring her back. Or maybe we won’t. It’s something I can’t now know.
But she’s got a chance, which is more than most get. I’m glad she was able to take it.
