Girl from the 'hood

Holly
1993 - 2006
Just before Christmas 1993 I got a call from my mom, asking if we'd be interested in getting another cat. It seems that a stray had found its way into their garage and had made itself at home. She said they would keep it until we went there at Christmas. A flame tip Siamese, with orange ears and face and blue eyes, it was love at first sight. She was named Holly, partly after Holly Golightly (another stray) and also because it was Christmas. There is a house around the block from my parents where I've seen several cats that look like her and I loved having a cat from the neighborhood where I grew up.

While Holly possessed a quiet determination, she was never stubborn, and even as a kitten showed amazing strength. One day, on arriving home, I found a blanket in the doorway of the bedroom. Holly loved to play with and tug on this blanket, but to this day I still don’t know how the tiny kitten could have dragged the blanket off of the bed and several feet across the room.

She was also intensely loyal and caring. Holly had always been the "baby" and because she was small, looked like a kitten until she was about 4. When Rita joined the family a few years later, an as yet unseen maternal instinct blossomed overnight and she watched carefully and lovingly over the little kitten. Since Rita’s litter had been abandoned at birth, rescued at three or four days old, and raised by hand, Holly was the only maternal figure she ever knew.

A few years back, when my friend Mona became ill during a visit, Holly stayed by her the whole time, earning the nickname "Holly Nightingale."

Last February, I found a growth on her lower abdomen. After testing, it was removed and determined to be a malignant tumor. I planned to go ahead with follow-up treatment, but before she had fully recovered from the surgery, another growth had appeared. This one was removed as well, and in May I consulted with a veterinary oncologist. However, the treatment might have given her a year, maybe 18 months, and it just didn't seem like it was worth putting her through anything more. So I resolved to make what time she had left as pleasant as possible and to enjoy her as much as I could.

Up until the past week, when her condition began to decline, she continued to show the strength and resiliency that led the staff at the veterinarian's office to nickname her "the miracle kitty."

Today, however, I knew that the end was near. She wasn't interested in eating and wouldn't respond when I called her (she'd usually meow back at me). Late this evening, as I was going to bed, I noticed her breathing had become labored and a while later she began to occasionally cry out. Knowing that sleep was impossible, I got up to watch over her, telling myself that the time had come and steeling myself for a visit to the vet in the morning to have her put to sleep.

I found her laying under the dining table and picked her up and carried her to the couch to talk with her and comfort her. Rita sat on the other side, occasionally licking her ear or the top of her head. It was one of those times when it seems like nothing else exists outside of the room you're in.

Around 2:45am, her breath stilled, then she relaxed and quietly passed away. Two of the hardest things about being a pet owner are that you know that you will probably outlive your pet and that (other than in the case of accidents) you will probably have to choose when the end comes.

I had anticipated that this end would come in the vet's office and would be of my choosing, as it had been with my other cats. But it was so like Holly to relieve me of that responsibility, and to depart life in the same way that she lived it: in her own time and with quiet steps.

Holly is survived by her sister Rita (who, as I type this, is sleeping next to her) and now joins her brother Jem and sister Tess.