Zelda was a fierce and gentle creature. Like her namesake, she was saddled with an insufferable writer as a partner and cursed to live a short life. Her beginnings were not easy: a street cat on Oakland’s Telegraph Ave, she was, by the time I got her at the age of 3, largely feral. My friend explained this meant she had never been socialized to humans — their touch, their care, their love.
For the first 2 years Zelda lived with me, I would try my best to get her to let me hold her. I was adamant that Zelda learn what it meant to be held, with love. At first, we worked our way up to ten seconds of hugging. Over 2 years and many permanent scratch marks on my arms, we built up to 30 seconds. Then minutes. She began to purr when I touched her. To wake me up, purring atop of me.
As our bond grew over the course of 4 years together — outlasting jobs, cities, relationships, quarantines — I began to see why this special spirit entered my life.
Everyone projects onto their pets. But I also believe people meet for a reason. Zelda, whose first 3 years were full of traumatic, survivalist days, never lost a deep and abiding sense of gentleness. It took time to lessen the hyper vigilance, sure — but at her core she was a deeply sweet, brave, and gentle soul. She helped me shed the layers of my own difficult past, the defenses against my own gentle spirit.
At 7, four short years since we met, Zelda suffered congenital heart failure. Hospitalization was traumatic; giving her the twice daily regimen of pills, equally so. The prognosis was not good.
The night before New Year’s Eve she began having difficulty breathing, again, I decided it was time to let her go. To allow her the gentle dignity of a pain-free death at home, instead of repeated trips to anesthetized ERs to prolong the inevitable. She died in my arms. She didn’t want to go, but who among us does.
Euthanasia is unnatural — nature lacks the grace of a merciful end. She would have continued struggling and suffering, without any knowledge of an alternative. Therefore I chose to end her suffering, the moment it grew too great. It’s impossible to say if I ‘chose the right moment,’ but it would have only gotten worse, and I freed her of that future torment, as a final gift.
I’m grateful to have crossed paths with a creature at once so defenseless, and yet so fully composed of survival at her core. A paradox of deep tenderness and wariness. A fearless cat, with a heart too large for her tiny frame to bear.
Here’s to the legend of Zelda Kitzgerald.
