Lola.

If you aren’t a pet person, feel free to skip this one.

If you’re here, it’s probably for snark-crusted news and commentary and not eulogy soup. Apologies in advance. I thought about skipping today, but the truth is I needed to write this somewhere—and this is where I put things when they matter. I’ll be back with my regular feisty fare tomorrow. In the meantime, thanks for being my people and letting me be me.

---

Sometimes the news cycle doesn’t matter. Sometimes finding the funny is too hard. Sometimes you just need to grieve.

Yesterday we said goodbye to our baby’s baby. Lola was a cat; a beautiful kaleidoscopic tortie-tabby mix, if we’re being technical. But she wasn’t just a cat. She was a delicate thread in the fabric of our family, woven through and around so many moments and memories that it’s honestly impossible to imagine a world without her.

And now we don’t have to just imagine it—somehow we have to live in it.

The child in this bed is now 6’ tall and of legal drinking age.

We should never have even had the privilege of Lola in the first place. She was an impulse purchase; a last-minute scramble nearly two decades ago when life decided to teach my very young daughters a lesson about death that none of us was ready for.

We basically needed a cat that day. Eenie, meenie, miney, Lola.

---

If you’re a crazy cat person or just enjoy a good cry, here’s that chapter:

---

Lola filled a hole in our hearts and in our home. For an extraordinarily long time, she wanted only Sasha—which was fine. It was perfect, actually. It was as if she knew. Sasha was her person and her purpose, and we loved her all the more for her single-minded loyalty.

Lola had the softest fur you’ve ever felt and the exact face of Bastet, the iconic Egyptian lioness/goddess. (No, actually though.) She was also scrappy and fearless and guarded the house like a German Shepherd. Woe to the neighborhood tomcat that wandered into our yard.

Social she was not. When company came over, Lola would curl up under the farthest bed. She once slunk into the living room when my brother who lives in the same town was over for dinner. “Did you get a new cat?” he asked. She was fifteen.

It took ten years—maybe it was twelve—before Lola began to warm up to the rest of the family. And by warm up to, I do not mean “went out of her way to cuddle with.” I mean “let us pet her briefly.” Nobody minded. It was understood: she belonged to Sasha.

Then three years ago, Sasha did something unthinkable: she grew up. She graduated high school and moved to New York City and Lola was stuck with me and Joe. She decided, pretty much that first night, that she’d be sleeping with us from now on, specifically directly between our heads, if it wouldn’t be too much bother. By this point, she was old and we were old and everyone was too tired to argue.

Maybe she had simply mellowed. Maybe it was any port in a storm. Whatever the reason, Lola let us in. She snaked around my ankles when I cooked and sat at the edge of the tub when I bathed. She knew the sound of my toothbrush meant bedtime and would assume the position. During the day, she made Joe’s office her own, claiming her spot on the back of the sofa where the sunlight poured in all afternoon. There’s a Lola-sized dent in the cushion that will probably outlive me.

Her decline was gradual until it wasn’t. Even when her eyes had clouded over and it was clear her hearing was nearly gone, she could still jump onto the bed, got excited about catnip, and would announce precisely—and loudly—when she wanted to eat.

And then one day, she didn’t want to eat. Just like that. Hard pass. We tried all the things the internet tells you to try. She wasn’t interested. We pleaded. She refused. We prayed. She slept. We cried. She shrank. Finally, we made the awful call, the one that supposedly makes you a noble, selfless person because you are putting your pet’s comfort and quality of life before your own broken heart, except why don’t they let you do that for people then?

The hardest goodbye.

There’s nothing I can say that could do our sweet Lola justice. I’m struggling for words—as if the right string of characters could somehow bring her back to us. I want you to know her, to appreciate her, to mourn her. And maybe, if that’s your thing, say a little prayer for her. She probably would have hated the attention, but if you said it was for Sasha, I bet she’d allow it.

Lola with her BFF Miko. (Their brother Harvey Specter is camera-shy.)

RIP, Lolabug. Our world will never be the same without you.