This is a story about my cat who is the love of my life and if it’s not your thing I suggest not reading it but it’s the only way I can process my broken heart right now.
MAR 28, 2025
I wake at half past six in the morning with tears. I try to brush them away but they quell under my closed eyelids and start to wet my face. I get up and go to the bathroom to dry them and blow my nose. Not right now, I think to myself and get back into bed, chest rampant with grief.
Half an hour later the alarm goes off and my boyfriend stirs. He’s leaving for New York this morning. I curl up into his arm and we cuddle in silence for a while exchanging few words. I can tell he is distracted with his day ahead. I don’t mind.
I have my own inner world to tend to.
He gets up, dresses and places the final things into his already-packed bags. We embrace and kiss a few more times, and I ask him to keep me updated on his journey. “I’ll get everything ready for you for when you come”, he smiles tenderly. “Ok,” I reply, “I’ll bring all the fun”. We kiss one last time, and he walks out the door.
Finally, alone. I can grieve.
I can’t believe I let go of my baby!!! I sob out loud to myself. The waterfall of sadness that has been pressing against the edges of my body begins to pour out. I had cried, but in more restrained ways, up until now.
My baby, I keep saying between waves of tears. I’ve lost my baby. I start to clean the house. A well-meaning friend sends a photo from when he really was a baby, and it sets me off again.
I take the rug off the floor, put it in the washing machine and cry. It’s full of cat hairs. I wipe the surfaces, move the furniture around, and vacuum the remnants of cat litter sprinkled on the floor and cry. I strip the linen from the bed, mop the floors and cry.
I clean to move the emotions through my body. I clean to change the energy of my space after a week filled with big feelings. I clean for self-care to help stage my own letting go process. I clean, and I cry big, loud, ugly, sobbing tears.
We met almost exactly 6 years ago in Mexico.
There was a construction site where a big resort was being built between the old town and the jungle where I lived on the Pacific Coast. Walking home one day I heard high-pitched cries coming from inside the site which was taped off. The tape read ZONA DE PELIGRO. Danger Zone. The tiny squeals continued so I ducked under the tape and followed them. Between tools and sheet metal behind concrete bags, there was a tiny paw poking out.
“Hello, little baby”, I said softly as I crept closer and squatted down to see a tiny cat, ginger and white, with a bloodied nose and an injured front leg. I couldn’t leave him there like that, so I wrapped him in my sarong and placed him inside my basket, holding it closed to prevent his escape.
At home, I let him out where he carefully inspected the perimeter. A habit he kept every time we arrived somewhere new. I called a friend of mine who knew a vet. While I waited on the sofa, this tiny furry being jumped up and curled up into my arms. I’d never had a pet before, and I wasn’t planning on having one. I was too nomadic. It didn’t make sense.
The vet came almost immediately with cat supplies and food, and every day after, for seven days. Repairing his sprained leg and giving him protein shots and antibiotics to help him mend. I planned to let this little creature heal and then find a home for him. I named him Danger Zone for fun in the meantime in ode for where he had been found.
That first night, I put him to bed on the sofa, kissed him good night, went to my bedroom and closed the door. Moments later, I heard his tiny baby cries and paws pawing at the door. I laughed and let him in, surprised. Do cats normally want company this much? I thought to myself. We both settled into bed, me on my back, him wrapped around one of my legs and fell asleep.
Weeks passed, and then months.
I haphazardly looked for a home for him but in a country filled with stray cats, no one was particularly interested. Also, I was falling in love.
He had this endearing need, always wanting to be close, our bodies always touching. His presence was a gentle balm, softening a part of my heart that had calcified after my last breakup. His love was unfiltered and unconditional.
Separation triggered anxiety in him, his cries echoing up the street as soon as I turned the corner. I reshaped my life around him, trading some personal freedom for care, time together, and presence. My maternal instincts, once dormant, found new expression through him, one of nurturing and connection. Men I dated bristled at my devotion, struggling to compete with a bond they could neither understand nor replicate, a connection that prioritised his needs over theirs.
A year later, I knew it was time to leave Mexico.
I had career ambitions and dreams that couldn’t be met in the humid jungles I resided in. And I had him. Danger Zone Honey Bear. More Honey than Danger.
For a while, I toyed with finding him a home. Again. One day, on the phone with a friend who had noticed that I had become sullen and sad in our calls, he pointed out that I was likely depressed because I was thinking about separating from my cat. He was right, though I did not want to admit it.
Defying all logic, a decision born of pure emotion; impractical, perhaps even selfish, I decided to take him with me. I don’t regret that decision, even for a minute. I don’t think I would have survived what happened in the past five years without him.
We moved to Brighton in the UK for eighteen months and then to Mallorca, Spain, for another eighteen months, and then back to the UK for another eighteen months, where we toured the country for a while before settling in a cute little village in the forest. He loves being outdoors and having space to roam, so when the opportunity came to live in a cabin surrounded by nature, I jumped at it to give him a home that made him happy.
But I was not fulfilled.
There was so much more life I wanted to live and experiences I wanted to have, and being tied to a home for a cat made those things impossible. Though I tried. There is something in my makeup where my external environment and my internal journey are inexplicably intertwined. They always have been.
Different places activate different parts of my being, and I cannot access them without this key. I read so many articles on people judging this way of being as if I am seeking happiness in someplace new. But I am under no such illusion. I know that ‘better’ and ‘happier’ don’t exist out there.
That’s not what this is about. It’s that the essence of my soul is made up of everything on this earth, and to access those parts, I need to collect them in all the different places.
And so I tried to do it with him. Because I wanted to. Because however hard it was it was worth doing together. I put him through so much. Including a terrifying two weeks on a sailboat in an attempt to get to the other side of the world, together.
Because every time he is in my arms, he’s good. I’m good. Everything is good. Nothing else matters. Together, we were always fine. We have a secret language, this invisible thread that connects just the two of us.
In our six years together, he was my greatest teacher.
He taught me how to be present no matter what else was happening in and around us. He helped me heal my inner child by teaching me that his needs — for routine, for comfort, for affection, for attention, for safety and for stability — were also myneeds. He taught me boundaries by modelling a no-f~*ks-given attitude towards what he likes and doesn’t. He helped me heal my unhealthy patterns in romantic relationships by being so securely attached and available for love that anything less was no longer accepted.
When we ended up in Portugal, I was content for life to show me the next steps, as I always do. And it did. I met a man, fell in love and chose to build a life with him. Paid subscribers know the intimate details of this story so I won’t go into it here. Danger and I sublet a friend’s apartment, he grew fat because he had no outdoor space to run around in, and we were happy together.
When my boyfriend invited me to join him in New York I had to make a decision. In February, when I decided that, yes, I would go, I revisited something I had thought about before but wiped from my mind.
I went to work to find him a foster family. I posted on local community groups and asked friends to post on theirs, and a few weeks later, I met a lovely Mexican woman who was enamoured with taking him in as he, too, is Mexican. We met, and he met her and hated every minute because, of course, it was a strange new person in a strange new environment, but nonetheless ideal. She agreed to take him. Happy and relieved, I booked my flight.
Two weeks later, late at night, she sent me a text. She had gotten cold feet and wanted me to find him another home. My heart sank. I understood. Accepting an animal into your life is a big responsibility. I appreciate not taking it lightly. But it meant that I had less time to find something suitable.
I tried all the same methods, reached out to every friend I could think of, and asked everyone I knew locally for help, but no solution materialised. Stressed by both the decision and the process, I started looking up local organisations that could house him and found an animal protection agency in Lisbon with a promising reputation.
We email back and forth, have a phone call, and they offer to take him and find him a home and agree that I would bring him the day before my flight. A few hours later, an email landed in my inbox that said that if I wanted their help, I had to bring him the next day. Something about having space now and not later. When I read those words, I fell apart. It was too fast and too soon. I want as much time with him as possible. But I also need their help.
My boyfriend offers to go with me several times, gently reminding me that I don’t have to do this alone. I love him for wanting to be there for me, but this thing, I have to do alone. This is between Danger and me.
That afternoon I pack up his toys, put his favourite food in a plastic container and cuddled with him as much as I could. That night I hold him in my arms and try to imprint every detail about him into my memory.
His soft, silken hair. The way he places his paws on my hands. The way he sneaks up and puts his face on my face. The way he closes his eyes with pleasure every time I kiss him. He soft mews when he wants something. The quiet purrs when he’s nestled into my body. Every sweet gesture breaks me and makes me grateful for the time we have had together.
The next morning I get up, call an Uber, kiss and hug him one last time and silently put him in his carrier. I can’t speak. I cry the 45-minute drive to the agency. Once there, they get me to fill out some forms, pay for his medical requirements, and take him away. The process is sharp and painful. I hear him cry in alarm in the back somewhere, and my heart shatters. Empty and distraught, I walk out on shaky legs, sit on a concrete block and weep deeply. A woman comes down from a nearby building and touches my shoulder to comfort me. I am beside myself with grief and unable to remain composed. I call an Uber and cry the 45-minute drive home.
It’s been three days. Waves of grief bring me to my knees. I wonder if I made the right decision. I feel so much shame and doubt. But mostly shame.
It’s the little things that destroy me now.
The little flutter of excitement to see him that I get in my heart when I’m heading home. The little cat hairs he has left as souvenirs on every item of clothing. The little pitter-patter of his paws that followed me from room to room. The way I leave the bathroom door open a little because he always demands to come in. Sitting down anytime, anywhere, and immediately becoming his human cushion. Getting into bed and waiting for him to jump right in after me. But now he doesn’t.
He is not here anymore.
Close friends check in on me throughout the day. Each kindness triggers a new set of tears. Today, I have two weeks left here.
Noticing is my favourite art form. It’s how I find beauty in the ordinary, meaning in the messiness, poetry in the in-between moments.
Writing has always been my way of capturing it all… of making sense of the world, of holding onto the fleeting magic that might otherwise slip away.
Starting on Sunday, April the 13th with the Full Moon 🌝 I am leading a 6-week writing club as an invitation into that practice. EB prices end on Sunday.
Join me for The Art of Noticing HERE.
Vienda Maria 