Transition

Paws that would grab my fingertip in a slow, needling squeeze are still, and her eyes, while open, see nothing. Even so, her expression reads as nothing less than a fierce concentration, and in this moment as the vet pushes the sleeping drugs into the catheter, she is still breathing. I can see her side rise and fall with the quick, shallow breaths of quickly approaching death.

I stare down at the floor for a moment, to try and master my grief, then force myself to raise my head and watch as the second dose goes in, and her chest rises, falls, and then the mysterious something that was my cat is gone, and we are left together in the room, weeping with a stranger beside a mass of fur and flesh that used to be our friend.