Karma is a Cat

On unconditional love, reverence for grief, and being Bigger than the Whole Sky

Author’s Note - This post is going to look a bit different from my historic posts on this blog. If you’re not an animal or pet person, then this post might not resonate with you. This post also contains content related to depression and suicide. If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal ideation, please text or call 988.

Four years ago today, I walked into a small cat shelter in Albany, New York, and walked out with a tiny 9 pound cat that I named Cleopatra Selene - Cleo, for short. Little did I know that four months later the world would be locked down as we prepared for the long haul that was the Coronavirus Pandemic.

It wasn’t really love at first sight between Cleo and I. I would say it was more of a mutual living arrangement at first. She was 7 years old when I adopted her, and she had been living in the shelter for three years. I had just moved to Albany and didn’t really have a network of friends in my back pocket. I was trying to figure out what my new life would look like, and she seemed like she was just looking to be left alone. We made kind of a motley pair. The shelter couldn’t tell me much about her, just that she was found eating trash in the streets of Cohoes (yikes - if you’ve ever been to Cohoes you know what I mean) and that she hadn’t quite warmed up to any potential adopters. She had a microchip, but it wasn’t connected to an owner, which the shelter shared was typically a sign that she had been abandoned at some point by a previous owner.

I took one look at her and knew she would be coming home with me that day. Cleo quickly became queen of the house. At first, she would sleep in the living room and would seldom approach me of her own free will. We danced around each other for about three months. She would sit on the opposite end of the room, and then we graduated to her sitting on the couch with me - but all the way at the other end.

I’ll never forget the first time she voluntarily came and sat on my lap. It was around February 2020. She made very cautious movements - putting one paw on my knee, then looking up at me to see if I reacted. When she sat down on my thigh, my heart soared. Shortly after that, she started sleeping in the same bed as me every night, and pretty soon from there we were never that far apart from each other. She made appearances on work calls and became well known amongst my colleagues. I called her “my bubs.” I would put music on and pick her up and dance around the apartment with her tucked under my arm. I loved the way she would snore when she was fast asleep, and how she would routinely spend two hours after breakfast policing the birds that flew past our window.

We all remember where we were when the world shut down. Our lives became more insular - and in my tiny basement apartment, my life turned to Cleo. There wasn’t much to do, so when I watched a new tv show, Cleo watched it with me. She tuned in with me to Governor Cuomo’s daily one o’clock pressers, listening intently for any hope that we would be able to re-enter normality. We established a routine that became my saving grace in an increasingly chaotic world. Suddenly, the only consistent thing in my life was that this little cat needed me to feed her at 7am.

I lived through the pandemic alone with Cleo, while also balancing an extremely toxic work environment, and the worst bout of depression I’ve ever experienced. I was disappointed in my career path but felt little ability to change it. I had moved to Albany thinking I would re-connect with old friends, only to realize upon my return that my assumption had been incorrect. I became extremely closed off - seldom making plans to see anyone or leave my little bubble. I thought a lot about suicide during this time - something I find hard to talk about now. Despite everything I know about mental health, admitting that I’ve felt that way still stings with a kind of shame that I can’t quite pinpoint. I felt like I was on a buoy in the middle of a vast, dark ocean. The waves would crash around me, and I felt like I was sinking with every gasping breath.

Depression steals a lot from you, including your ability to see all of the beauty and abundance in your life. At one point, in a quest to help me find purpose, my therapist asked me to write a list of reasons why I should stay alive. Only one ever made it onto the page:

1. You can’t abandon Cleo.

Miraculously, that one reason was all I needed. Eventually, Cleo and I moved to Rochester so that I could get some support from my family and get back on my feet. I had left my job without another one lined up and had been unemployed for some time. I was desperately trying (and mostly failing) to pivot my career into law, and had been trying (again, mostly failing) to make law school happen for two years at that point. My parents, who typically are right about a lot (even though I hate to admit that out loud) encouraged me to move in with them for awhile. I decided that going back to my roots was the smartest decision, and Cleo came with me to live with my parents until I figured out my next step.

She was never really the same after we made that move. I’ve ruminated on this for months - whether the change in environment was too much, whether I took good enough care of her, etc etc. I had figured out that the next move would be to Boston, where I would attend law school, and hoped that once we were back to our normal routine that Cleo would equalize. In mid-April, she took a turn for the worse, and stopped eating or drinking. She became listless and sluggish. Her hair was falling out in clumps. We tried some vet interventions but it wasn’t immediately clear what the problem was. On the fourth day of her not eating, she didn’t get up to greet me when I walked into the room to check on her, and I knew it was time to make the tough call.

It has been eight long months since I said goodbye to Cleo Selene in the emergency vet’s office in Rochester, NY. She was one month shy of her 11th birthday. My mom drove us to the animal hospital while I sat in the backseat with her. When we got there, we went through the paperwork and I asked my mom to leave the room so that I could say a private goodbye before the vet came to administer the medication. It had just been her and I for three and a half years, and it felt appropriate that it just be her and I at the end.

I remember being overwhelmed with tears and thanking her for everything she had done for me. For being a quiet supporter and at times my sole confidant. For sitting with me through the darkest days I’d ever experienced, and for bringing me laughter when I thought there was none. I told her how much I wished she would have gotten to come to Boston with me - how I had picked out my new apartment specifically with her in mind, and how I knew she would’ve loved the big windows overlooking the busy street below. I told her how deeply sorry I was - that I had felt like an inadequate cat owner, like I hadn’t taken care of her well enough at the end.

And, very quietly, I sang Bigger Than The Whole Sky to her. The lyrics, to this day, always make me think of her:

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
You were bigger than the whole sky
You were more than just a short time
And I've got a lot to pine about
I've got a lot to live without
I'm never gonna meet
What could've been, would've been
What should've been you

Two days after I said goodbye to Cleo, I had the strangest dream. In the dream, I was in a barely furnished apartment, and I was putzing around the kitchen for God knows what. After some time passed, I heard the pitter-patter of four little paws - a sound I had been so accustomed to. Without pause, my dream-self knelt to the floor as Cleo rounded a corner and came to bump her head against my calf, as she did multiple times a day to greet me. I scratched under her chin just the way she liked in life, and scratched behind her ears. She pushed her head into my hand harder than she ever had before, and we sat like that until I jolted awake. It felt so real - realer than any other dream I’d ever had - and it took me a second to come to terms with the fact that it hadn’t been reality.

Regardless of how you feel about the afterlife, I like to believe that what died didn’t stay dead. I think Cleo was giving me a heads up that she was okay on the other side - wherever that may be. Every now and then, I look up and see a shadow in the windowsill, or hear an echo of little feet on the wood floors in the kitchen, and I know she’s there.

My grief on days like today feels insurmountable, but I try to form it into the shape of gratitude. I have no idea what good karma I could’ve possibly put into the world for it to have given me the gift that was Cleo, but I do know under no uncertain terms that I would not be here right now, in my current life that is so abundant with happiness, if it had not been for her. She gave me purpose during a time in which I felt that I had none. She reminded me to hold on, because it does get better. As it turns out, your buoy in the vast ocean can be any number of things. For me, it was Cleo.

She was bigger than the whole sky.

In memory of Cleo Selene - May 2012 - April 2023
Happy gotcha day Bubs - December 28th, 2019