My bestest buddy Casper crossed the rainbow bridge today.

I’ve known it was coming but it still hurts. He never really recovered from his tooth extraction back in June and his kidneys decided that it was time to go. I had him on kidney diet and everything to help, but he hated the food and was starving himself, so I let him eat what he wanted and focused on a quality of life thing for as much time as I could get from him.

Wednesday was a really good day for him. He was active, actually ate his food for once, and was walking around the apartment. Unfortunately, that was the peak, and by Thursday night he was barely able to walk or even make it to the litter box. He just wanted to sleep on his heated bed, so I lay down on the floor with him and just… talked to him. He got up, head butted me, let me pet him, then walked back to his bed and didn’t budge. I knew it was time then, and made arrangements to take him to the vet this morning.

Yesterday was the hardest day I’ve dealt with in a very long time. He didn’t want to get out of bed, was wobbly when he tried to drink some water, and forgot what he was supposed to do in the litter box. It was the right decision to make, but still… I feel like shit.

I adopted Casper (his name was Reef back then) from an animal shelter in 2011 in Lexington, Kentucky. I wasn’t there to get two cats, just one. I was actually playing with the cat below him (I ended up adopting him as well at the same time because the shelter was overcrowded and offered me a two-for-one deal) when this paw smacked me on top of my head. I look up and see this gorgeous cat with heterochromia (one blue eye, one brown) two-and-a-half year old jerkface staring at me, like “how dare you ignore my magnificence!” I asked the shelter staff about him and they said he was “an absolute asshole who really didn’t like anybody” and I knew he was destined to come home with me.

Amazingly, he was the most dog-like cat I’d ever seen in my life. He came when called (he didn’t respond to Reef but after trial and error he responded to Casper so the name stuck), played fetch, loved to be cuddled and pet, and was an attention whore. I like to read books lying on my stomach, and he quickly discovered that he, too, liked to use my back as a bed while I read books on my stomach. I also discovered that Casper really liked to sleep on my mousepad when I was writing books.

He was a huge part of my writing career. Like, I had no idea until I started thinking about it Thursday night. Of my 80 completed projects since I started my career, 78 were written with him right by my side. Only the first edition of Corruptor and a short story (in Lawyers in Hell) were completed before he came into the picture. Every single book or story he was either sleeping on my arm while I typed, or curled up at my feet and drooling. More than once I almost dedicated a book to him because, as I reasoned then, “my boy needs high quality food, so daddy needs to get paid.”

I’ve put him into books and stories before. Hell, in the short story Hill 142 he was the main character. Lazarus from Quintus Fox is based off him. He was my writing partner 10000%, and… grief is weird. Grief is hard. But grief means that he was more than just a cat, and for my psyche, that is important.

Pets come and go in our lives, and we give them all the love to cherish them as they do us. That’s the entire idea of pets… companionship. I’ve had 8 cats and 2 dogs since I’ve become an adult. Losing them to age or health hurt in different ways. This is… the first time I’ve felt absolutely devastated, like a massive part of my identity was suddenly yanked away. I keep looking down at my feet to see if my buddy is ready to start the next chapter because we have an anthology due to turn in.

…and he’s not there. So I’m not ready.

They say all dogs go to heaven. I’m pretty sure Casper will get special disposition. He earned that much.