It was Memorial Day, 2008. I was at The Grove to see my mentee read at a WriteGirl event, where I was volunteering as a mentor. On the way back home, I took a route that was completely circuitous and not going to get me where I needed to go any faster. I was driving east on Beverly towards Vermont and had just passed the crazy intersection where Beverly, Virgil, and Silver Lake meet. That’s when I saw a tiny little black object that I thought was a piece of trash in the middle of the street.
Cars were going around it slowly, and as I approached it, I saw it was a kitten. “That cat’s mine,” I immediately thought to myself. So I stopped my car, turned off the ignition, got out, and went to try and get him. I got remarkably close to the tiny kitten but at the last moment it hissed at me and ran away. As people were driving by honking, yelling, and flipping me off, I got back into the car and thought to myself, “Okay, cat, I tried to save you. You’re on your own.”
So I turned on the motor and started driving away. That’s when I saw an older lady with two kids walking on the sidewalk. She was waving frantically as I moved a few feet in my car. So I got out of the car again, and while she couldn’t speak English, she pointed at the hubcap. There was a tiny downy-furred body wedged inside. I heard it meow, and I saw a tiny little booty, little gray fluff — still kitten fluff — and I broke down crying completely. Did I maim him?
A girl who had been watching this from across the street came and helped by calling 911. The older lady with the two young kids was still there, too. One of the little boys who was with her said, “Gatito!” For a long time, I thought he said “gordito,” but years later I realized he meant “gatito”—kitten.
And very slowly, with no siren, a huge fire truck showed up, effectively closing the intersection. The firemen got out and started to jack up my car so that they could unscrew the hubcap of my right rear wheel. One of them said to stand back because he didn’t know if the cat was going to be mauled. But I knew the kitten was okay because I heard him meowing.
So they opened the hubcap, and out ran the kitten, almost into the street, until the fire captain grabbed him and brought him to me and said, “I think this cat’s yours. You should name him Lucky.” The cat left a filthy paw print on my chest.
If the older lady and the kids hadn’t been there, and if she hadn’t motioned me to stop, I would have killed that poor little creature in my wheel by driving away. I told one of the little boys, “Please tell her ‘thank you,’ and that she saved this cat’s life.”
Meanwhile, the nice girl who came to offer emotional support and call 911 went into KFC and got an empty bucket. That’s how I transported the cat in my car. He was absolutely tiny in that little bucket. He didn’t even cover the bottom. I tried to pet him, but he hissed at me, so I respected his wishes and just let him be. Suddenly, his name came to me from deep within my subconscious: Nando.
I took him to my parents to watch him for a bit because I had work that evening in the West Valley. Together, my dad and I washed the tire grease off him and cleaned him up. There was some news that day about Mars, so my dad decided his name would be Mars. That’s how his name somehow wound up being Lucky Nando Gordito Mars.
I don’t know why I named him Nando. Maybe because of Nando’s Chicken in the UK, where I had lived the year before. Or maybe it was the song “Fernando” by ABBA. Or maybe it was because I was heading to the San Fernando Valley, where I grew up. I just loved the name Nando. And he was such a Nando. With a short “A,” an American “A.” Nando.
Together, we lived in four different homes and made it through four failed relationships. His first home was with a dog, and a few years later, I got a dog of my own, so he grew to see himself as one. He only saw another cat once. They were painting the courtyard of my building and put up some scaffolding, which enabled a random cat to walk in through the open sliding door of the balcony. Eventually it left, at which point Nando hissed at it long after it was appropriate.
Nando’s job was simply to be as big, strong, and easygoing as he could grow up to be. But his main job, his #1 occupation which he excelled at, was Constantly Licking Shirt. Wherever I was lying or sitting, he would come up next to me and lick my shirt while he purred like a buzzer. He did this all the time, steadfastly “grooming” me and purring like crazy. The feeling and sounds of his purrs were so incredibly healing. In fact, I believe that cat changed my body over the course of nearly two decades. It felt like his vibrations were doing something — like they were some kind of frequency or battery for my soul. He often licked the whole shirt. Once he left a wet mark in the shape of a heart in the center. But he didn’t like bare skin, or weird fabrics like fleece, for instance. Too much traction for his little cat tongue. He didn’t like iron-ons, either. He preferred just a nice cotton shirt or sweatshirt. He was a shirt purist.
Although he was a feral baby, he quickly became the most domesticated creature in the world. He grew into an enormously strong cat, but with the heart of a gentle giant. He never went outside, and didn’t care to. He was more than content to lie on my bed or couch, curled up, eating, drinking, going to the bathroom, and occasionally getting the zoomies. He also loved to look outside. In one of my earlier apartments, I had to pay to fix the horizontal blinds because he carved out a space for his head to look at the birds. He also loved to stand on my dresser and “fish” out socks from the top drawer. And he enjoyed playing “bing-bong” with the pull cords for the blinds in my current home. He worked for years and years to pull off the little wooden knob at the bottom until he finally succeeded. Of course, I kept the little wooden trinket.
Once he grew older, he developed illnesses and issues. Feline lower urinary tract disease, a heart murmur, pancreatitis. He was on a special prescription diet since the age of 3, eating the same damn thing every day, with sprinkles of catnip here and there. But he didn’t complain. Sometimes he would naughtily sneak some of his big sister Auggie’s dog food. But with all of his afflictions, I listened to him without exception, and I knew that he didn’t want to have to go through anything invasive or scary. He and I always paid attention to our instincts, eschewing any route that would involve endless infusions, an official c-word diagnosis, the label of “failure” of any kind. He’d just get his basic shots and regular vet visits. In the past year or so, however, he became more and more ill. He couldn’t hold down food, started to vomit water, and eventually stopped eating altogether, opting to hide instead.
I took him to see several vets, without much success. I knew it was time when, after not eating for five days, Nando half walked out of his hiding place in the closet as if to go eat. Then he let out a meow that sounded like “Noooo....” and turned around to go back in the closet. So I put a mug of bone broth next to him. When I went to check on him later, he had put the tip of his tail in the mug instead of drinking it, staring at me in that way I couldn’t help but smile. “This is all your bone broth is good for,” he seemed to be telling me. “To warm my tail.” It was a classic, adorable Nando move. The next morning the broth was all over him because he was so wobbly, he tipped over the mug.
Nando was the very first pet that was truly mine, that I’ve taken care of so long, and that I had to make some very difficult decisions about. We belonged to each other. I always said I would never opt for euthanasia, but I could feel him suffering and my suffering was making things worse, too. So with the help of some dear friends, we arranged at-home euthanasia. It was truly the best thing I could do for him. I could feel the peace overcoming his ravaged little body that was once so big and strong. He passed away in my arms.
When you’re a child-free woman who loses an 18-year-old pet, you’re essentially going through the loss of a child. Nando was with me for 1/3 of my life. He changed me, and we were each other’s anchor. No other creature on the planet has ever shown me as much consistent physical love and affection for so long as Nando did. He loved me unconditionally in a way that made me feel blessed to be chosen by him to be his lifelong caregiver. All those purrs and shirt licks were tiny expressions of love and gratitude. Maybe he was depositing all that love in a bank of some kind, and it is still compounding. The love we gave to each other was something we both created, and I know it’s not gone. It lives forever. And he is always with me.
❤️🩹 they really do teach us how to care. it’s so brutal to miss them. thanks for writing this.
Beautiful.