Callie P.

Callie P. Herndon 1993-2013

She got quiet. She became withdrawn and avoided us. She swayed when she walked and couldn't get up on the sofa to cuddle anymore. She started sleeping almost all the time and stopped eating.

I took my 20 year old cat to the vet to be put down yesterday. By 5 p.m. I was driving aimlessly through my small town, uncertain what to do next, my dead cat in a crate in the back seat of my car.

At the age of 45 and 3/4 I am pet-less for the first time I can ever remember in my life. We always had a dog or a cat or a bird or a hamster throughout my childhood. When I got my first apartment, I adopted a sweet little black cat who I named Spaz. For obvious reasons.

In 1993 some kids in my apartment complex pulled a teeny tiny kitten out of one of the dumpsters. Well, I couldn't just let her die, could I? Or live in a shelter?

She was terrified. Spaz tormented her, and she basically stayed under the bed all day, coming out only to eat and use her box. Eventually, she became braver and more personable, but she always was relatively shy.

Once Spaz was gone, he died in 2007, her personality really changed. She became bolder, friendlier, as if she realized that she was the queen of it all. It was like having a different cat.

Callie was a great pet, aside from all the shedding. She never jumped up on the table, didn't get on the kitchen counters, didn't get into our food. Spaz did all of those things and so much more. She was totally easy to live with and wanted not much more than a lap to cuddle when she was in the mood. She loved to chase the laser pointer.

We buried her at my mom and dad's place, where Spaz rests along with my childhood cat Simon and another cat that I raised from a kitten, a yellow tabby named Bailey. The cat graveyard is now complete.

It's crazy how attached we become. However, after the suffering Spaz went through in his final week of life, and the grieving I went through, Mitch and I decided that when it was time we'd accept it and let Callie go. I didn't want her to suffer.

I can only hope when I am old and I can't eat my favorite food anymore, can't get into my favorite chair anymore and can't walk by myself without great effort....well, someone will be so compassionate with me. Honestly.....

My last look at the cutest speckled ear ever. 

By the way, ask me sometime about how I ended up driving 12 hours with a dead cat in my car.