On Tuesday, we said goodbye to our beloved elder cat Goose.

All cats have personalities, and I don’t use this word lightly, but Goose…Goose was unique.

On the day she adopted him, his former guardian had visited the Spruce Goose, hence his name. He was a bottle baby, and he never stopped being a kitten. His greatest joy was rubbing his face against yours, just as a kitten rubs his face against his mother’s, or smushing his nose against your neck (or trying to shove it in your ear or up your nose) while he kneaded and purred.

When my friend, his former guardian, said that she had to give him up, at age 15, I said there was no way I will allow this cat to go to a shelter. I contacted local friends to see if any of them could take him, but no one could. So it fell to us to take him in.

Little did we know how Goose would change our lives.

It took a while to integrate him with our other cats at the time, Clara and Max.  They were friends and not entirely happy with a new arrival, especially since Clara is deaf and didn’t understand this new obsessive snuggler.

Because Goose was a snuggler. His happiest place was in your arms so he could commence with the face rubbing. I had to buy a baby sling to hold him while I worked at a standing desk, because otherwise I had to hold him in one arm and try to work with only one hand.

He would crawl under the covers and stick his face out and snuggle against you, but his favorite thing was to curl up on the pillow next to you, noses touching. He would snuggle with Ken when we went to bed, and I would wake up with him snuggling with me.

Recently, he has been losing weight, and we’d been monitoring his kidney disease as well as his heart murmur for some time. We took him Monday to the vet, and his kidney failure was worse, so she sent us home with a bag full of fluids and needles and appetite stimulants and anti-nausea meds, etc. But it became clear that he was having more and more trouble walking, and although he snuggled with us that night, we knew.

I tell all my cats when they get older that I promise if they tell me they’re done, I will respect that and end their suffering. Tuesday afternoon, I lay on the bed with Goose, and he wasn’t really interested in face snuggles, but he kept turning his head to look at me, and I understood what he was saying.

I cradled him in my arms, the way he loved to be held, as we said goodbye and watched the light go out of his eyes.

Despite three other wonderful, magical cats in the house, everything feels quieter and emptier. My heart aches.

“And then he was gone,
and all the colors and the light of the day
crumbled and went out.”
(Tanith Lee)