Losing a pet, they say, is a practice run for losing a human you love. But for something that’s only a rehearsal, the pain feels very real. In his podcast series Animal, Sam Anderson describes the death of his family’s hamster as a toothache that settles on the house. The days after the death of a pet pass in a fug and eventually, because the human heart is resilient, acceptance follows, and maybe someday in the future you’ll surprise yourself by talk of another pet. That’s usually how it goes.
But not in the case of JJ, our handsome, sweet, manipulative six-year-old black Bombay cat.
From the start, JJ did everything on his own terms. We planned to adopt one kitten through a local rescue service – Lydia was an 11th birthday present for my oldest daughter. But when we arrived to pick her up, the woman who answered the door had one tiny, shivering black bundle in each hand. Which do you want, she asked. Of course we took them both.
Lydia was ridiculously lazy, unfailingly loyal and, to be blunt about it, a bit dim. But JJ was different. He was a bright boy. You’re not supposed to be able to train cats – as cat owners will confirm, they train you. (As cat owners will also confirm, there’s no such thing as a cat owner. Think of yourself instead as an unpaid Airbnb host to a perpetually unimpressed guest who might abscond without notice and deposit a poor review in the middle of your floor.)
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Let’s put it this way: he entered into a deal with my younger daughter, just three when he arrived, whereby he would sit and stay for as long it took for her to give him a piece of roast chicken. Soon she could leave him for 10 minutes and he’d still be waiting in the same corner of the kitchen, stock-still as a trained sniper.
As they got older, the relationship between JJ and Lydia became more fractious, and JJ began staying away from home. We suspected he was two-timing us with another family, probably the kind of people who didn’t insult him with a diet composed mostly of expensive hypoallergenic kibble. We discovered the identity of the other family when my neighbour Phyllis phoned me once during a bad storm worried because he wasn’t at home. By which she meant her home.
One morning in early 2022, when he was five, JJ didn’t leave immediately after snaffling some grub. By the time the text arrived later that day, I already knew that gentle, cat-loving Phyllis had died. He stayed with us for a while as he mourned her and then he got back out there. But whenever a roast went on, he’d appear like magic in the chicken spot.
I think we always knew that one day he’d just stop coming home. That we could have coped with.
It was a Saturday afternoon in November last year when a neighbour phoned to say there was a distressed black cat in their front garden that looked like one of mine.
The painful angle of his back legs was how I knew JJ was in trouble. He had been hit by a car which did not stop. He pulled himself as far as my neighbour’s gate, and was wedged between the railings. I looked around for an adult to tell me what to do, but my small daughter and the poor, broken cat were looking at me.
In the end, the nine-year-old was the brave one. She held him in a box in the back seat, as he whimpered and tried, with his two working front legs, to claw his way out. She talked to him in a soothing voice and kept him calm. In the vet’s surgery, I put a hand on his small, warm head and whispered goodbye.
The vet phoned later. The cat’s spinal cord was severed. She could dose him up with steroids and fluids overnight, she said. That would give you some time to decide, she said. I asked her what she would do if it was her cat? She said that she would let him stay asleep. But if you need time ... But taking time would have meant delegating the decision to my three children, so I told her to let him sleep.
The days after were hard. The absence we thought we had got used to now permeated every room. The vet called again and asked about caskets for his ashes. Something nice, I said. Maybe wood.
Seventeen days later, I was at work when my husband rang.
“Guess who just walked in?” he said.
[ Cats: is there a more narcissistic, self-centred, self-satisfied mammal on Earth?Opens in new window ]
If you have cats, you may have seen this one coming. JJ was back. JJ had sauntered in, eaten some kibble and was now, as we spoke, in the chicken spot, gazing optimistically at the oven. I didn’t believe it until my daughter sent photographs.
The vet was understanding when I phoned to say that the cat I euthanised was not, in fact, our JJ. It happens, she said. Does it, I asked. Well no, she conceded. But black cats are hard to tell apart. We tried to find the owner, but he had no microchip. I felt terrible. She said I had still done the right thing, and offered to split the bill.
By the time I got home that evening, JJ had been fed and cuddled and told off and reminded how much he was loved. He slipped back out into the night. And we never saw him again.
It’s been a year, and we have nearly all come to terms with the fact that JJ is really not coming back. The other black cat, the cat I am still only half persuaded was not JJ, gifted us the chance to grieve. My younger daughter is convinced JJ is still out there, living his best life eating someone else’s roast chicken.
