My grandma woke me up just after dawn on Christmas Eve with the phone in her hand and distress in her voice. It's your brother. He needs your help. My parent's cat was fading in its ninth and final life and we were asked to take the precious fuzzy to the vet for its last rites. Neither of my parent's could do it. They were too attached. Olivia, a black and white sweetie was too close to the family.

So my brother and I met at our Parent's house in the kitchen and made a smoothie before going upstairs to collect the cat. Neither of us discussed what we were really there to do. We distracted our guilt with chat about super-foods and sugar alternatives. He and I are the health nuts in the family and possibly the first to make light of the situation we both found ourselves in.

Upstairs we found the kitty in the bathroom. Sleeping? Not sure. She wasn't responding to her name. Were we too late? I stroked her back with my foot in fear that her lifeless fur would be unsettling and/or turn me into a zombie. She lifted her head and cooed for us. My brother and I jumped in sync not expecting her to react. We were hit men, but without the cool, casual demeanor required for cinema.

This wouldn't be the first time I'd walk into that house to find a dead animal. In 1996 I returned from New York City with a cat in tow. I wasn't sure how old my cat was, nor did I know it's medical history. It was the result a random adoption by a roommate and I somehow ended up caring for him/her/it. In those days my step-mom forbid a cat in the house so it stayed in my room whenever she was home. It was only a few short weeks that I'd come home to find the cat frozen on my bedroom floor; eyes wide open, gazing over its own reflection in a puddle of kitty saliva. I buried the cat almost immediately with the help of a friend since I couldn't go near the body alone. I decided on a place in the yard directly in line with the sunset as seen from my bedroom window; a scene the cat attended daily. I attributed cause of death to claws-traphobia. I moved out of my parents' house the next day.

Now here I was years later about to perform a similar duty for my Step-mom, who had fallen in love with cats sometime shortly after all her deprived, cat loving children had moved out. We scooped up the exhausted pussycat and carried her to the vet in her favorite basket. She was ready. Her kidneys had been weak for a while and today they had immobilized her for good. The doctor (who I had attended high school with and was not surprised to learn he was the Vet remembering he had a pet pig back in those days) said to keep her alive would require constant medical attention and billions of dollars, neither option seemed humane to my Parents. So we gave the OK for euthanasia.

By this point I had spent enough time with the cat to see that the kitty couldn't wait to get it over with. Cats love napping the most and in her current agitated state, I'm sure this option sounded like a dream. All my life I'd imagined the process to be somewhat torturous. Who else but an evildoer could enter a room with a fuzzy animal and terminate its life? The term "put to sleep" was always the unsettling part. Or maybe it was just my own brain and having seen too many episodes of Faces of Death as a youngster. (A reality based series about people whose lives were accidentally spent on camera. I do NOT recommend it to anyone.) To this day I don't enjoy horror films. Hollywood gore reminds me too much of the real thing. But, being traumatized by those videos could be at the very root of my existentialism. Hmm. I never thought of it that way.

When it came time to sedate the family cat we asked if we could stay to give the feline some love and familiarity. Really it was to give myself my own comfort in the process. I assisted by holding a leg back for the doctor to find a vein for injection. The kitty didn't resist in the slightest. If anything, she was saying to us, oh yea, rub my belly while you're at it. Then she nodded off. But that wasn't it. It would be another 10 or 15 minutes before the medicine would stop her heart, therefore, she would exhale her last breath during a most relaxing sleep.

While in the waiting room, I flipped thru an illustrated pamphlet appropriately titled, Death of a Pet. It answered such hard-hitting questions as: Is it okay to cry? When will I feel happy again? Should I discuss my feelings with an animal doctor? Will my pet ever come back? Does my friend, who lost a Hamster, feel as sad as I did when I lost a dog? Does size matter? Does dying hurt? And of course, Will my pet go to heaven? Thanks to this informative novella I didn't have tie-up the day of my busy animal doctor. It was Christmas Eve after all.

My brother and I got back in the car with just our empty basket. We acknowledged the others' weird feelings and knew we were being of good service to our parents who remained at their respectable places of work during all this. We weren't sure how to act or what to do next. What tasks to occupy your life wasn't mentioned in the handbook. We agreed a morning beverage would be the best idea, coffee for he and tea for me. Then we got to talking about our health again. Grateful we had ours.