bella.

This isn’t exactly a minimalist post, but I feel compelled to share Bella’s story, and this seemed like the best place to do it. Our pets are so often our best teachers about the simple things that matter most in life, and Bella was no exception. She was an extraordinary teacher and a true friend, who patiently supported me through the messy transition years between youth and adulthood, even when I didn’t deserve it. Especially when I didn’t deserve it.  And for that, I am forever grateful.

The winter of 2002 was not a high point in my life story. I had just barely escaped a classic burnout job and had leapt directly into one that was going exactly nowhere. I was dating a much older man who had no intention of ever committing, but suggested that perhaps we could have a baby while living in different apartments, “like they do in Europe.” I carried my life in soggy grocery bags between his posh condo in Cambridge and my slumlord-owned one-bed in Brighton, where the old clawfoot tub never came clean, no matter how hard I scrubbed. I thought about moving out of Boston. I thought about diving back into my college romance with scotch on the rocks. I more than thought about running off with other men.

Instead, I decided to get a cat.

It was a particularly brutal February night, and I hummed a little Dar Williams as I fast-walked from the T stop to the animal shelter. My feet were soaked by the city slush. My umbrella snapped. I showed up with barely thirty minutes to spare before closing, and with a local TV crew staked out across half of the shelter. “You can look at the cats,” the receptionist told me, “But stay out of the picture.”

I started at the far left of the wall of cages, looking in at one sad little cat face after another. The TV reporter held his finger to his lips, silently shushing me, and I nodded. Some of the cats looked up, seemingly hopeful, but most ignored me as I walked by, silently. As I turned to make my way down another row of cages, a white paw shot out and hooked its claws into my coat. The paw was attached to a fluffy black and white cat, with serious yellow eyes that said, “Really? Like you have somewhere else to be?”

Ten minutes later, the paperwork was complete. Bella came home with me the following week, and made it instantly clear that it was time for me to grow up and get my life in order.

Whenever I made a bad choice, she judged me…and I was twenty-nothing, so I made a lot of bad choices. The way-too-old-for-me boyfriend was the first to go, but Bella continued to mete out punishment whenever I brought home someone who did not meet her standards. One of her favorite tactics was to pull a cashmere sweater from the laundry bin and shred it to bits, whenever I allowed ne’er-do-well to spend the night.  She was also fond of hissing at those she found unacceptable…which was pretty much all of them. And she was right.

Soon after, we moved to a better apartment in Back Bay and she took to sleeping beside me at night, tunneled under the blankets in a neat little mound. She’s stay there all night, only moving when I woke her in the morning. She followed me everywhere -- to the kitchen, to the bathroom, even into the shower. She had somehow decided that I needed constant supervision. And she was right.

Bella politely disagreed when I moved in with my first husband, going so far as to even run away one night.  She came back the next day, but continued to make her reluctance known.  We moved again, this time to a loft overlooking the ocean, where we drifted for a while, uncertain of what was next. I turned 30. I got a divorce. Bella sat by the window, ears pricked for whatever was coming, knowing that it was something big. And she was right.

When Scott entered our lives, Bella changed. She relaxed a little, secure in the knowledge that she wasn’t solely responsible for taking care of me anymore. It wasn’t that she instantly loved him, but her instincts were always impeccable, and she trusted him without question. The three of us became a fierce little family, adventuring in Philly for a few years before settling back down in New England. Along the way, we picked up Coco, who was intended to serve as a companion for Bella, but mostly served as her foil. Where Bella was careful, intuitive and guarded, Coco was a toddler loose in a toy store, gleefully crashing into everything in her path and making friends with everyone along the way. Bella was not amused, but she tolerated her, for my sake. She knew Coco was there for a reason. And she was right.

Were I the author of my own story, I would have included Bella in many more chapters. She always seemed so enduring to me, so permanent. Cats can live to be twenty or older, and I always assumed that Bella and I would grow old together, bitching about arthritis. Instead, she passed away suddenly in her sleep last night, almost exactly twelve years since the day we first met. I had stayed home sick from work, and she spent the day in bed with me, tunneled under the covers like she used to do when she was a kitten, purring away while I sneezed and coughed. After one particularly bad coughing fit, she crawled up to my pillow and put her paw on my face, as if to say, “You’ll be okay.”

I really hope she was right.