I spent last week in full pet hospice mode, watching over my beloved cat YoYo as he was winding down. It was an exhausting week, and he finally died early Friday morning after I’d passed out for an hour.
Some may think I’m crazy, but I think he timed that.
As I spent the weekend thinking about YoYo and talking with family and friends about him, I became more aware than ever that, although I was the one who adopted him, it always did feel like maybe he chose me through some sort of cosmic voodoo. He was a black cat, after all — who among us really knows what kind of magic they can work? This could just be the sleep deprivation talking, but I’m not ruling out anything at this point.
When my last dog, Tomo, died in 2009, I swore that I was done with pets forever. He wasn’t even living with me then; he’d been at my former spouse’s house for several years. Still, it was brutal losing him, and I quickly realized this kind of thing seemed to be getting more difficult as I got older.
I can now confirm that this is the case.
YoYo joined the family in May of 2015, just a few months after my dad died. There were no plans whatsoever to get another pet, let alone a cat. In fact, for most of my life, I had been telling people that I didn’t like cats at all. Then a no-kill shelter near where I lived was having a big Memorial Day adoption push and — with almost no thought at all — I found myself there. Yoyo and I bonded and in very little time I was heading home with him.
I knew so little about cats that I had to Google everything. We were told that he would probably hide for a few days when we first got him home. It was only a few hours before he was hanging out on our laps and getting to know us. My daughter wanted to give him a literary name, and she chose “Yossarian” from Catch-22. That quickly became “YoYo,” which was eerily similar to “Tomo.” I think our subconscious minds may have been at work there.
I had always heard that cats were aloof and loners, but my buddy was anything but. He was clingy and affectionate. He licked me all the time. It didn’t take long before I began to understand what his various meows meant, and there were a lot of them.
I know I’m not the only pet person who has gotten the “our furry friends choose us” vibe. A friend of mine has remarked on many occasions that we were a perfect match, because YoYo probably wouldn’t have enjoyed living with someone who didn’t work from home. He would often register his displeasure by hissing at me when I returned after being gone for just a couple of hours.
Last week was very different because I’d never experienced having a pet do a long goodbye like that. All of my dogs’ deaths were decisive. Something would happen, we’d make the decision, and they would be gone. I knew last Monday that YoYo only had days left, so I resolved to keep him as comfortable as possible. Again, it’s a bonus that I work from home. He had always been there for me, so I had to be there for him until the end.
YoYo came into my life at a time when I was dealing with loss and grief and, for more than eight years, was a constant companion through all of the ups and some pretty rough downs. We grew so close that people who remembered my “I can’t stand cats” days began to joke that I was now a cat guy. I would respond to everyone of them with the same line: “No, I’m a YoYo guy.”
Always.
Rest in peace, buddy, I’m grateful for every day we had together.
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