The day before my sister Lydia turned 4, in the summer of 1995, my parents surprised the two of us with a cute, fluffy gray ball of fur with green eyes and white paws. She’s still the best gift anyone’s ever gotten me, even if, presumably, she really was meant to be more of a gift for my sister.

We named our new kitten Nala, after the lioness princess from Disney’s The Lion King—VHS tapes of which were, at that time, still available in the “New Releases” section at Blockbuster. Admittedly an unimaginative choice, but it was 1995 and we were kids. I was a few months shy of 8 years old.

Lydia and I initially weren’t quite sure what to make of Nala, and Nala wasn’t quite sure what to make of us. That first day, the three of us were bundles of nervous energy, following each other around, trying to play but not really sure how, or whether or not we could really trust one another.

It didn’t take long, though, for Nala to win me over. Fortunately, Nala rather liked me as well, which was very good news because Nala was not always the easiest cat to deal with in her younger years. She did not get along with strangers; guests unlucky enough to cross her path could expect aggressive defensive action. More than once I was called in to coax Nala off the stairs so some poor, unfortunate friend of Lydia’s could pass through. Only family members could safely pet her without fear, and for a while I’m pretty sure I was the only one who felt safe enough trying to pick her up.

She was always trying to get outside, too, and if she succeeded, trying to reel her back in was a nightmare. I could sometimes manage, with patience, to coax her back in myself. For anyone else, a blanket, a pet carrier, an extra set of hands, and a first aid kit were the minimum standard recommendations.

But Nala could be very affectionate when she felt comfortable and secure, which is one reason why her more antisocial behaviours never much bothered me. Just about every afternoon after I got home from school I would park myself on the couch, and Nala would show up about 5 minutes later. Sometimes she just sat next to me for a while. Sometimes she curled up on my lap. Once in a while, she would reach up and put her front paws on each side of my neck as I scratched between her ears and under her chin. Those are happy memories.

By the time I graduated from Calvin, got married, and moved out of the house in 2010, Nala was already beginning to slow down. But within the last year her health began to deteriorate much more rapidly. Our family suspected (and later more or less confirmed) that her kidneys were failing. She was having trouble eating and lost more than half her body weight. (Mom kept trying different foods, a strategy that yielded only intermittent success.) She became feeble and frail, and she gradually lost her hearing, too, before eventually going completely deaf.

She wasn’t in pain, as far as we could tell, and she had become as affectionate as she’d ever been in her life. She followed Mom around the house, asking for attention. For the first time, she was happy to let strangers pet her. She not only tolerated, but wanted to be picked up. You could even take her outside, if you wanted to—she was far too old and far too slow to get away or into much trouble. In some ways, she had never been a better, kinder, or more faithful pet than when she was dying, which only made it more difficult to accept what was happening.

Two weeks ago, on May 13, Nala turned 19. The following Sunday, Mom made arrangements to put her to sleep.

I arrived at my parents’ house a few hours before the vet’s scheduled visit. Nala was curled up on the floor of the kitchen. I spent a few minutes petting her, but the experience was a little surreal. How strange to be aware, as your beloved pet simply goes about her day like any other, that in a matter of hours a stranger is going to stick a needle into her and stop her heart.

Suddenly I felt guilty, not only because of my participation in ending my friend’s life, but also for not being there to visit her more during her dying months. I felt like, in 10 minutes of scratching under her chin, I was somehow trying to make up for the last four years of only sporadic visits. Nala just purred.

The procedure went smoothly, and quickly. We were told that it could take up to 10 minutes for the tranquilizer to fully set it, but it knocked Nala out in under a minute. Mom and I barely had time to pet her before she had fallen out of consciousness for the last time. A second and final injection put her into cardiac arrest. Nala was gone.

After a few minutes talking with the veterinarian, I cradled my longtime friend and carried her out to the car. As I set her down for the last time, it occurred to me how much my final memory of Nala reminded me of my first. A cat wrapped in a blanket, her green eyes wide open. A boy, filled with nervous energy, not sure what to feel.

Stephen Mulder

Stephen Mulder (’10) is a copywriter, editor, account manager, husband, and member of two semi-professional choirs in West Michigan. He spent the majority of his college days inside the Chimes office, eventually serving as editor, web manager, and delivery-boy-in-chief in 2009–2010. He graduated with a degree in history.