April 26, 2025

April 26, 2025

Blue’s barking pulls me, staggering, out of my dream. With great effort, I open my eyes and glance around my dark room, disoriented. I hear the front door open and a woman’s voice. Before I can dwell for too long on the fact that I can’t place the voice, I catch what she’s saying.

“—just wanted to ask if you know whose cat this is, because I hit her with my car and—”

Suddenly I’m up and throwing on a shirt and running down the stairs.

Mommy, Maya, Nina, Emma, two unfamiliar women and a man are crowded around Luna, our small, black and white cat.

And she’s hurt.

I slide into my sneakers and join the quiet chaos on our front lawn.Maybe it’s that I’m tired, or the fact that this cat is invincible, but I just stare.

And listen.

The woman who hit Luna is explaining how she didn’t even see her, that she’s so sorry, and do we have a vet? And… Maya, Nina, and Emma head back to the house in a jumble, to put on shoes and brush their teeth, but I just stand there. Confused. It’s like the world is moving around me but I’m on pause. I’m not even sure what's being said until Mommy puts a hand on me and tells me to go get ready to go to the hospital.

Then I’m brushing my teeth.

Then using the toilet.

And then I’m somehow in the car, and it’s moving, and Maya has Luna in a carrier on her lap.

“How’s she doing? Mommy asks, her eyes set on the road.

“She passed out,” Maya murmurs.

“La pobre, that must be the pain,” Mommy sighs.

I’m staring out the window as reality starts sinking in.

Luna got hit by a car. One of her legs is broken—maybe two. She’ll need surgery and physical therapy and she won’t be allowed outside for a while and when she is who knows if she’ll be traumatized and she must be in so much pain and—

We’re there.

I’m stumbling out of the car and into the vet and Luna’s rushed to a back room and we get a private waiting room and I hear the words ‘feline CPR’. Isn’t CPR used when someone stops breathing? 

Nina and Ema start fighting about who gets the last corndog and my senses dull.

I’m dissociating.

Lua must be so scared, I think, watching a mosquito buzz around the room.

So scared.

Mommy comes in and sits on the couch. “She’s gonna be fine,” she tells Maya.

And we wait. It feels like forever, but it’s only a few minutes. The vet walks in finally, and I’m ready to hear the good news.

But she pauses. And her eyes betray the backstory she’s giving, and I know how her story is going to end before she says it.

“Her heart had stopped when she came in,” she said gently. “We started CPR immediately but we haven’t gotten a response yet. Now, this is your call. Do you want us to keep trying? We have to consider the damage already done to her body due to the hit and such a long stretch without oxygen.”

Silence.

Then, in a broken voice straining to hold back tears, Mommy says, “No.”

That’s when the first wave hits. And it’s fucking awful. The realization that Luna is dead consumes me as the doctor leaves to tell her colleagues to stop. I pull on my hat to hide the tears streaming down my face as though my sobs haven’t already given me away, as though my mom and sisters aren’t wailing four times as loud as I am.

And we’re crying for a few minutes, and Nina’s trying to pin the blame on the women just so she can wrap her head around the fact that our cat is gone. And then the doctor comes in, and she’s carrying a blanket, and two white paws and a black tail hang limp over the edge.

And the wave hits again.

I have to try three times just to pull myself out of my chair. I can’t hear anything over the sound of my own tears, but for a just moment, when I first see Luna’s mouth hanging open, I swear I hear her meow. I’m sucked in by the undertow into this vast ocean of grief, and I’m drowning in my own tears and Luna’s just floating there, and she isn’t moving, and part of me knows she’s gone but can’t say the words outright—

The current drags me to shore and I wash up on the deserted island of denial.

I’m in the car. I’m staring out the window and blowing my nose and I can’t take it in. Luna’s not gone. She can’t be. She can’t be…

I can’t think the word. I can’t think the word, but I think I murmur it at some point. And when I get back home and I see Smokey hiding in my closet I sink to my bedroom floor, crying, and I call him over and as I hug him to my chest I tell him, “Luna died. She got hit by a car, Smokey.” And my voice is so small that it makes me feel worse.

The rest of the day drags on, with highs that feel like cliffs that would inevitably drop into valleys. The gravity and realization of Luna’s death comes in waves; overwhelming when they break only to draw back and hit all over again, destroying the tiny sandcastles of joy and relief.

I tell Sofi.

Mommy calls Daddy.

I speak with Jen, a therapist, and I hate the session a million times over.

Titi Amanda and Nana come over.

It feels like the longest day ever.

And I cry. So. Hard.

I love you, Luna. I’m really sorry that you were in pain when you died. You should have lived so much longer.

I know you’re in heaven, Luna. I know you’re playing on the rainbow bridge. Maybe you’re with Tash Henry, and Rosie, if she had to be put down all those years ago.

I’ll see you again one day, Luna. You can count on it. But I have a life to live, and you losing yours has reminded me how precious it is.

I’ll pick you up Bedunes. And until then, I know you’ll be our guardian kitty.