I never open, let alone read my emails from the New Yorker Magazine. Sent to my student email once a day, in popped the headline “The Tail End,” by Sloane Crosley. I immediately saved the email, even though I didn’t want it to be applicable to my current circumstance. It was the evening of August 7 2024, and Cinnamon, my cat of about four years, had come back from the vet earlier that day with my dad. I asked him to take her to the vet because I didn’t have a car and  I was too busy taking summer classes to make the 45-minute drive. Nonetheless, he came back with her in the crate.  I felt awful putting her in that thing as she resisted.

Cinnamon was a Bengal cat, and if you know Bengals at all, they are particularly wild in their behavior. She had so much energy in such a small little body. She was the most beautiful little cat you’d ever see, with a brown coat covered in spots that made her look like a leopard. She would stare up at nothing, maybe shadows in the room, with her big green eyes. I always said her eyes were like those of an alien. My dad and I gave her the rude nickname of “s**t lips” due to her brown mouth area. I know, very original.

Dad comes back from the vet to my apartment in Amherst, with Cinnamon yelling out from the crate. After freeing her back into the apartment, he tells me the grim news. Cinnamon has a severe case of congestive heart failure (CHF), a genetic condition that is apparently common in Bengals.

“Is she [going to] be okay? Can she live with it?” I asked hopefully. Immediately tears began welling up in my eyes.

“It will kill her…” he replied. “She probably won’t live for much longer.” I gave him a hug as we both broke down.

I had notified my dad that Cinnamon needed to go to the vet when I noticed she had been struggling to breathe. I had never seen her in such bad shape; I knew something wasn’t right with her (call it a mother’s intuition). The vet said CHF can be managed with diuretic medicine, but the prognosis was still the same: Cinnamon would live a maximum of another 3 years while feeding and medicating her properly. She wasn’t even 6 years old.

I vividly remember meeting Cinnamon for the first time. It was Christmas of 2020, during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. My sisters and I drove over to my dad’s new house.  There was no one on the road, and it seemed to be pure white outside; everything was covered in snow. We walked into the house in Springfield after he told us that he had a surprise. I saw the contents of a can of wet cat food on the floor in a bowl.

“Oh my god you got a cat!” I screamed. Cinnamon was not even two years old when my dad got her; she was slightly older than most of the cats adopted  by the cat breeder, because she was the runt of the litter. Two big green alien-like eyes peered out at me from under the bed where she was hiding. I welcomed her to the family and then we proceeded to open our Christmas gifts.

All three of us had a lot of questions; the biggest one being why dad decided to get a cat in the first place. He replied that living alone had become lonely at times, and he wanted an animal companion. Of course, the responsibility of owning a cat ended up on me when I moved into my dad’s house in early 2021. The house then had three occupants: my dad and I, and little Cinnamon.

Obviously, Cinnamon and I became close. I remember being the only one in the house with her for a few days because I was sick with Covid. I don’t even want to begin to write about my in-house “dates.” All these men I let in that mean nothing to me now. Cinnamon saw it all. She knew me inside and out. We had so much in common, two antisocial yappers who tended to get overstimulated easily.

Dad started dating Tracy, who is now going to be my stepmother. Tracy is allergic to cats, so dad considered getting rid of Cinnamon. But obviously I refused to let him do that – Cinnamon was now my baby. Mine. She and I would sleep together every night, she would always rest right between my legs on top of the blanket I was under. She didn’t like being handled much, but she made a special exception for me, her mama.

So, dad and I made a compromise. Next semester, when I lived on campus again at UMass, I would take her to live in the dorm with me as an emotional support animal. My partner Jordan and I had been going out for a couple months at this point, and he was a frequent guest in Patterson Hall, where I lived. Cinnamon would still sleep with us every night and wake me up at the crack of dawn every morning, crying for food. Something I never thought I’d grow to miss. When Jordan and I moved in together in July 2024, I made special accommodation for Cinnamon to come live with us again, as the apartment complex we live in generally doesn’t allow pets. It was just me, Jordan, and Cinnamon, a happy little family.

We had just celebrated Jordan’s birthday the day before Cinnamon went to the vet for the last time. The day we put her down was exactly five weeks later. We had been managing the CHF with oral medication we would mix with her food, and things began to turn around. She noticeably felt better, and so did I.

Five weeks isn’t nearly long enough to say goodbye. Before I knew it, the day came where we arranged for a vet who I’d never met before to come to the apartment and put her down. From the initial vet visit, euthanasia is what ultimately needed to happen (CHF is a death sentence; cats don’t tend to show symptoms until it gets severe. It’s a survival instinct.)

I woke up on the morning of September 11 to Cinnamon crying out; she never did that unless she was in the crate. I found her at the bottom of the cat tower, panting. She didn’t want food, even though I tried to coax her to eat, and she was coughing up blood. At that point I knew that this was it. She was suffering, and I had to act fast.

In tears, I texted my dad about the situation. I told Jordan to come home right away, which he did. I’ve never had to put an animal down before, but here I was, witnessing the death of a cat that I deeply loved, at 22 years old. Lying with her on the floor while waiting for the vet to arrive felt like an eternity only in the moment. It was heartbreaking to watch, but really the only decision we could’ve made.

I’m so grateful for in-home euthanasia. Animals who are loved beyond words can pass in comfort,  surrounded by their families. If it were me, I wouldn’t want to go out any other way. Cinnamon always deserved the best, so in the wake of having to make such a permanent decision so fast, I really hope she forgives me. Still, nearing a month later as I’m writing this, it feels like I made a horrible mistake. But I would’ve hated myself forever if I had left her at home to let her suffer and die alone. I wouldn’t have been able to swallow that guilt pill to live with for the rest of my life.

It wasn’t even noon when we put her in the basket that day– the hardest thing Jordan’s ever had to do. After a year and a half of dating, it was the first time I saw him cry.  It was probably the last thing Cinnamon heard as her hearing started to fade into nothing. I put her favorite cat toy, a little frog covered in catnip spray, in the basket with her. She could never sleep without her frog.

I didn’t want to do anything more than rot in bed for the rest of the day after that entire ordeal. Jordan and I cried ourselves to sleep for a few nights after Cinnamon was gone. Grief is such a weird side effect of loss; something I had never truly experienced, not even after the death of a family member. It comes in waves. Losing a pet is like losing a child (I never want any real kids of my own one day, so this is as close as I’ll probably get). It’s especially painful returning home, and not seeing her in the doorway to greet me.

I lost a part of me that day. Crosley put it so beautifully in her own essay after losing her cat, she wrote:  “It’s like a secret I’ve been keeping with her had died.”  Cinnamon saw every side of me, from when I shaved my head after a horrible breakup to my evolution (for the better) since. I’m so glad I saved that daily newsletter email from the New Yorker; I simply didn’t have the heart to read it until the day Cinnamon passed.

To say the least, it’s what inspired me to write this essay. Us cat ladies must have some way to cope after the death of our furry children, and to me, spilling my guts into a word document seems right.  It hurts sometimes knowing that my college degree cost me this one-of-a-kind cat, but Cinnamon would’ve wanted me to thrive. She taught me to never settle for anything less than I deserve – to be the bad b***h I was meant to be.

I wrote a thank-you note to the vet who came to our apartment that day, and hand-delivered it when Jordan and I retrieved her ashes about a week later. I’ve never met a man more compassionate after only one encounter. I just wish he could have gotten to know Cinnamon during her life, which was cut short. I scribbled in my notebook the next day in class, drafting endless letters to her, as if she could read them. I even wrote poems for her, and I never write poetry. The wound is still fresh, and I told Jordan I needed time to heal. I miss having a cuddly little ball of fur in the apartment, it feels so empty now. I haven’t completely gotten used to it. I often see slight movement in the corner of my eye whenever I sit at my desk doing homework, and I turn my head to not see a cat anymore.

Every day gets easier, though. Although I’m no longer active on Cinnamon’s Instagram account that I dedicated to uploading pictures and videos of her, I’ve received heaps of condolences through direct messages. It’s never anything you really want to hear in the moment, but I can’t express my gratitude for the support I’ve received – it means a lot in the long run. I will always miss Cinnamon’s comforting presence, but the least I could have done was let her go in peace and comfort. I look forward to the day I can reminisce about her and smile.

Liv Cushman can be reached at [email protected].