When I was 9 years old, I met my best friend. When I was 22, I watched her die.
Back then I lived with my mom in an apartment building surrounded by deep woods. One day, Daisy appeared from the thickets. She looked like an angel. She had crystal clear blue eyes lined with coal black. Her fur was striped with tones of silver and brown, save for white gogo boots she wore on all four feet. She was pregnant and liked to eat dry cereal from the palms of all the neighborhood kids. I loved her immediately.
After months of coaxing Daisy with treats and patient affection, I managed to convince her to stay with me. When she had her babies on a neighbor’s back patio, we kept her and her only daughter. I can remember her kittens being so small they fit into the palm of my hand. As an only child and often prone to loneliness, Daisy and her kitten became my best friends. I’d spend hours watching them play together. I eventually decided because it felt like fate they ended up in my life, the kitten should be named Destiny.
For the next 13 years, Daisy and Destiny were the only constants in my life. We moved many times; each time they hid in my bedroom with me until they felt brave enough to explore their new surroundings. When I had friends over for sleepovers, my kitties were the main attraction. I’d dress them in doll clothes and my friends would help pose them for pictures. When I went through my first heartbreak, they laid on the floor with me while I sobbed and listened to Lana Del Rey albums on repeat. I read all my bad teenage poetry to them. During my stay in a psych ward after a half-hearted suicide attempt at 17, it was their photo I kept next to my bed to keep me going.
By the time I was 20, I’d saved up enough money from my retail job to move out of my mom’s apartment. Daisy and Destiny came with me, sitting on my lap in the passenger seat of my friend’s car. We shoved the last of my belongings in the trunk and drove off to start my new adult life.
Around that time, I discovered my fascination with death. I’d grown up religious and knew I never really believed much of it. In my new space still plastered with posters and fairy lights from my high school bedroom, I could finally explore life beyond religion. I read countless books about the death industry and death culture around the world. In the psych ward 3 years before, I’d become acutely aware of people’s discomfort and fragility surrounding the topic of death. Reading about cremations, week long death rituals, and Civil War era embalmings felt almost taboo. But I was so hungry for it all. The more time I spent peeking beyond the veil, the more I felt the joy of being alive.
For some time, I continued to work in retail. At night my roommate and I watched movies and hung out with our cats. She had two of her own and we bonded over how much they meant to us. I started dating and included the two most important details about me in my Tinder profile: I love my cats and I love death. Nearly no one made it through the conversations about sky burial and human composting except for my now partner. He listened and always asked questions. Meanwhile Daisy would be curled up in his lap, yearning for the attention to be on her.
I began to marvel at the life I was building for myself. I had my cats, an apartment, a car, friends, and a boyfriend. But I craved more. I wanted purpose and identity. One day as I scrolled through job postings, I saw one for a pet cremation technician. In all my learning about death, what would happen to my pets when they died hadn’t occurred to me. The job description fascinated me. I didn’t think I’d ever get hired, but I applied anyway. Somehow it all fell into place and for the first time in my life I felt I was somewhere I belonged.
Over the next year I learned how to operate alkaline hydrolysis units(water-based cremation), made memorial paw print art, and did my best to guide grieving pet owners through a process I’d never gone through myself. As time passed, I couldn’t help but notice Daisy was beginning to resemble the grayed, frail bodies of pets I was cremating. Once I noticed a small, growing lump on her belly I knew her time was coming. The same day I had this reckoning, she managed to escape my apartment overnight.
She was missing. She had seen me sob over the thought of losing her, and I felt like she separated herself to die alone. My loved ones gathered around me and we canvassed for her. She never came and I spent the next few days stationed by my front door waiting for any sign of her. I slept on the floor and my mind swarmed with memories of dead pets I’d seen at work. I thought of animal attacks, hit and runs, and the pure cruelty by humans I’d encountered time and time again. I stared at the last picture I took of her before she went missing. I was so broken thinking she’d never get the peaceful ending I wanted for her. Hoping she could hear me, I begged her to come back and spend the rest of her life with me.
Daisy came to me as an outside cat and spent most of her life yearning for the outdoors again. I think she knew she was dying before I did and needed one last adventure. I’d put up missing posters all over the neighborhood. After days of people calling about different cats or trying to scam me out of the reward money, someone finally found her. My neighbors managed to capture her and keep her until I could get there. The minute I saw her in their arms I crumbled. So many people never get to see their missing pet again. I couldn’t believe I was the exception.
She looked so much smaller and older than ever before. She smelled like dirt and asphalt and jumped at even the tiniest of sounds. I fed Daisy her first meal in days. While she ate I just laid next to her and stared. The joy I felt was overshadowed with pain knowing she’d still die soon. I believe she came back to me under the condition that I’d give her a good death. I never wanted her last day to be her worst. Within two months of her return, I scheduled her euthanasia.
My work offered in-home euthanasia. The morning of Daisy’s appointment, I fed her all her favorite treats and she feebly played with a sunbeam that danced around the kitchen floor. After over a decade of love, it all came down to this. I poured myself coffee and sat down on the couch with her for our last morning together. Destiny and one of my roommate’s cats joined. We sat together peacefully until it was time. My partner and roommate both stayed with me through the appointment. They held me while Daisy was sedated. She fell asleep in my lap and I let the veterinarian give her the final, fatal injection. Within seconds she was gone and my world went silent. I wrapped Daisy in her favorite blanket and the vet took her body to our crematory.
Throughout the night, many friends and coworkers reached out. They all told me I didn’t have to cremate Daisy’s body myself. I knew that, but it was the best gift I could give her after everything she did for me. She helped me grow up. Many times, she kept me alive.
The next morning I went to work and found her in her body bag. It was strange how emotionally detached I felt at that moment. It was just work. I took her body into a private room to do her paw prints. Daisy was no longer the soft, warm kitty that clung to my side for years. She was cold and stiff. She was merely a shell. I prepped her paws. I found myself criticizing details of her print I hadn’t gotten perfect. I went through the motions and I didn’t cry until it was time to let her body go. It was the last time I’d ever hold her. It was the last time I’d ever touch her ringed tail. It was the last time she’d ever wear her gogo boots. I placed her body in the cremation chamber and lowered the machine’s lid.
When I saw her next she was just bones. I held her tiny skull in my hands and thought of all the times I kissed her head. I found all her little teeth and matched them to bite scars she left on my finger when she’d gotten spooked once. I processed her remains and packaged the dust into a pink cat shaped-urn. There was nothing left to do except miss her.
It’s been two years since Daisy died. I still mourn her. I tell clients how much I understand when they cry to me over their own pets. I have no regrets about euthanizing her when I did. She never suffered and she trusted me to listen to her when it was time. She died happy, peacefully, and dignified.
Honestly the timing of entering that career when I did felt almost divine. I don’t know how I would have handled her death had I not known exactly what would happen when she died. It’s hard to imagine surrendering her body to someone else. I can only imagine the strength and trust it takes for people to do so, especially when it is so many peoples’ first encounter with death.
Destiny cried for her mother the first week she died. I poured all the overflowing love and grief I had into her. She herself is about to turn the age Daisy was when she died. As Destiny gets older and smaller, I know the time is coming again. I can see her mom’s face in hers and I know when she dies, it will be like losing Daisy all over again. My cats are the only tether to all my memories. I don’t know what life will be like without their shadow always behind me.
I do know that I am the luckiest person in the world for having known them. I got the chance to show Daisy how much I loved her in a way most people don’t. I was the last one to touch her, I was the last one to look into her eyes. I was the one to send her off to whatever happens next, if anything. As I mentioned, I am not religious. I can only hope that maybe someday, some way we’ll be together again. Daisy was my first true love and the profundity of her impact on my life will stay with me forever.
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