On Sunday morning, Luna died.

It wasn't painful, and she was warm and safe and well-cared for, but she was more sick than even the vet realized. Her numbers improved, she was more alert, and we were planning to bring her home on Monday. Maybe it was a blood clot, or maybe all the stress on her pancreas was too much, hell, who knows. The vet was just as shocked as us — maybe more so. They did good work, and treated her right. That's what matters.



Luna was a stray, found in a vent of a double-wide trailer in rural Arkansas. She was tiny and orphaned and not more then four weeks old when she was given to us. She was a great kitten, friendly and playful. Then she grew up.



I don't want to romanticize a cat that was, at best, a grumpypants loner who didn't really like very many people. She didn't have good grooming habits, she clawed our furniture to death, she scratched at the door of the bedroom to be let in at 2am, she scratched to be let out at 3:34am, she scratched to be let in at 7:15am, she put her litter-covered paw in the communal water bowl, and she liked to bite really hard if you didn't pet her the right way.



But there was the Luna would would stretch out with me on the bed and sleep, making barely audible snores, breath a soft puff on the arm she sometimes let me wrap around her. Most of the time that arm would be quickly licked into submission, because she loved to lick us. But on those rare nights, she would just lie with me and purr and snore and everything would be all right in the world. Some nights she would lie between me and Zach, and I would wake up to her tangled up in us and the blankets, snoozing with abandon, her heartbeat a staccato beat in my ear. It was always in startling opposition to the distant, aloof cat she was in the daytime. It was in these times, in the quiet dark, that I knew for all her posturing and disinterest, that we were trusted and loved.

I couldn't save her with the help of my friends, with the best medicine money could offer us, but I had almost seven years with a cranky, demanding, gorgeous cat who I loved to the best of my human abilities for her abrasive personality, so much like mine. I don't think, looking back, that she would find fault with me, although she might have a few complaints about the quantity of cat treats.

Ha ha, she was such a pig. I love her so much, and will miss her forever. But damn, weren't we lucky to have her.

Weren't we lucky.