Zeus
With commentary on grief.
My wife and I adopted Zeus somewhat spontaneously in the summer of 20181. According to her, she had seen him on the county shelter’s website and then had gone to visit the shelter on a whim sometime after, saw him again there, and couldn’t resist. After meeting him, neither could I.
The story she’d been told was that he’d been returned to the shelter three times by various families with children or small pets that Zeus didn’t get along with. Having known him now, he clearly didn’t jive well with others—child or animal—who couldn’t respect his boundaries. Someone along the way had had his front paws declawed. But Zeus was perfect for us, a couple chill homebodies, no kids or other pets and plenty of room for him. His given birthday was on our wedding anniversary.
Zeus was a sweet, affectionate boy; a maine coon/tabby mix so he was a big guy but also looked mostly like a regular cat. He didn’t do a lot of the regular asshole cat stuff2, no jumping up on things to knock stuff off the counter, no getting into inconvenient spaces or sitting on top of my keyboard while I was trying to use it, happy to stay indoors and hang out all day.
He adopted a dark corner in our closet as his first little safe space, but it wasn’t too long before he was willing to leave it to explore for other favorite spots. This was one of his main things for the entire time we had him; he’d pick out a favorite spot that would be his default location for most of the day, for weeks or months at a time until he suddenly would decide to explore for a new one, and it was always an event to see what new random place he’d pick out. He intermittently loved to sleep with us overnight on my wife’s pillow and he loved resting his head on my hand if it was placed anywhere near him. He would sometimes come to yell at us if we were up past our bedtimes. He loved laying in the sun and would get upset when it would disappear gradually from his preferred window spot as time passed.
He was also mysteriously obsessed with our shower. It started as a curiosity, then he’d want to hang out while you’re in there, then he realized it was free water. For a time, he would sit outside the bathroom just waiting for someone to come in, but from thereafter he would come running as soon as he heard the water come on.
We’re told3 it’s likely advanced liver cancer, in which case we should expect he only has a few months left. Else, it might be chronic bacterial hepatitis, which would have only a slightly better prognosis but still not great. We decided to start provisional treatment for the latter just in case, since in the former case there’s likely not much we could reasonably do.
I started writing this after we got his terminal diagnosis and before he’s passed away, and in doing so I’m reminded of Lars Doucet’s post on losing his son4. Reading it again now, there’s echoes of what I’m going through. I still see Zeus every day and it’s bittersweet, not knowing if he knows our remaining time together is limited. It’s not clear whether or how much he’s suffering currently, he’s still generally cheerful resting on his current favorite spot on our couch, and for the time being he still gets up excited every morning whenever he hears my phone alarm go off, so he can play with the shower before I can hop in. But also, for a while now he would saunter into the bathroom any time he’s disturbed and my medical brain wonders if it’s just idle desire or if he’s slipping and it’s one of the few habits he’s been able to hang on to5. We’ve been closing the bathroom door when we’re not around because he’ll sometimes go in there and stand on the edge of the tub until he loses his balance and we’re kind of worried he’ll hurt himself. I’m painfully hyper-attuned to every little thing he does now, worried whether it’s a sign he’s getting worse.
The uncertainty is pretty crushing along a few axes. I’m frustrated in the back of my mind that one veterinarian sent us to a second for a diagnosis they couldn’t provide, but who could only give us a narrower range of diagnoses they couldn’t successfully provide and suggested we see a third, a specialist for a biopsy. I appreciate their support and that their job probably brings them an endless parade of patients like Zeus but I am struck by the sort of abrasive aloofness of it all6. I also can’t be sure I’d handle it better.
There’s a spike of fear every time I unlock my front door or wake up in the morning. There’s pre-emptive guilt for if he were to spend his final moments alone, though this isn’t especially likely.
We got the above diagnosis at the end of January. February was mostly smooth sailing and things were even looking like they might turn out okay until the end of the month, when we noticed some unusual bloating and then some alarming incontinence. We managed to solve the latter by placing an extra litter box closer to his usual hangout but we still took him to the vet in the first week of March to have him checked out. Seems the bloating was entirely tumor.
It seems what finally got him was the sheer mass of the tumor making his breathing severely difficult and, while I thought I’d done everything I could to prepare myself for watching his liver fail, nothing prepared me for the miserable suffering of just trying to breathe creeping up on him suddenly. There was a little bit of noticeable jaundice too so the liver problems may have been compounding.
All of the warning signs showed up abruptly: lost appetite, lethargy, isolating himself in the far corner of our walk-in closet. He still wanted to play with the shower but couldn’t even comfortably lap at it with everything I could do to support him. His final favorite spot was next to the little water fountain we’d gotten for him and it was likely his last lifeline as he sipped from it intermittently. But the sound of him trying to breathe was nightmarish and picturing the last moments of his diaphragm finally giving up was constantly terrifying.
We took him in on Wednesday, March 12, 2025, to have him euthanized. Very bittersweet, devastating to see my boy go but it would have been selfish to keep him at home for longer when the joys of his life were rapidly being extinguished. Better to know he went being loved than potentially alone at home.
This is the first time I’ve lost someone who has been such a constant part of my life; both my parents are still alive, fortunately, and family pets in my younger days were sort of decentral to my life—they weren’t mine per se, and anyways I was not around when most of them passed away. It’s made me think a little more about the others in my life. My wife and I don’t have children, which is maybe why this cuts as hard as it does.
In grief everything is a little greyer and muted, like the contrast has been turned down on everything. I feel myself actively being tempted to neglect everything, since everything feels a little less real and more unimportant, but I think fortunately I’m able to recognize that the temptation is the grief and that humoring it will only make things worse not better. This isn’t the nihilism I prefer.
Fortunately, Zeus was insanely photogenic, so—in addition to always knowing this day would come—I’ve had no shortage of excuses to grab images of him at every stage of our time together7. Finality might give me the excuse to sort through them at least one more time, though the comfort is more in knowing they’re there for as long as I can keep them8.
We adopted a second cat, Babette, in early December, partly to see if we could ease Zeus into some additional companionship and also, admittedly, at least personally, because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to one day handle coming home to an empty apartment. We were careful and deliberate in choosing a second cat in order to find one that would mesh well with Zeus, and I think we mostly succeeded. She’s young and quite a bit more energetic but, being a rescue from a chaotic shelter home, is also a little timid and private. She’d done a great job of respecting Zeus’ boundaries despite very much wanting to have a new play buddy. Zeus had been a grump that didn’t much want to be around her, but I think he’d been gradually warming up to her over time.
But Babette is kind of a regular cat. This definitely feels weird to say but I think Zeus was more of a son to me than just “my cat Zeus”. I hope I come to feel this way about Babette too but she’s definitely more “pet” to me in a way that Zeus wasn’t, in ways that are difficult to describe.
I already miss seeing that little brown fuzzy pile next to the fountain in our bedroom. It’s weird being able to get in the shower without waiting for him. Gonna miss his yowls and squawks, his expressive face, how he’d start purring right away whenever you picked him up, the way he’d quietly greet you when he sees you come into the room. We’d cradle him to give him treats and he’d do this cute thing where he’d try to grab your hand to direct you right to his mouth. No more hand-pillow-ing or arms out smug comfy boy.
A little over 6 years feels like too short of a time but I’m thankful for the time we got with him and I hope we brightened his life too.
“Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. For us believing physicists the distinction between past, present, and future only has the meaning of an illusion, though a persistent one.” - Albert Einstein
Rest in peace, lil guy.
The reason I remember this so specifically is because we went to Evo in 2018 shortly after.
It’s hard to tell if this was just his baseline personality or if his younger years had much of the “regular cat” behavior conditioned out of him. I’ve read maine coons tend to be a little more dog-like in temperament.
This section will be for my thoughts after we received the diagnosis, in present tense; I’ll have written the framework for everything else somewhat ahead of time and I won’t have finished until after. We received this diagnosis January 23, 2025.
If you’re at all tempted to point out I’m writing about a cat and not a child, please be aware that I know and also consider that it might be best for us both if you stop reading here.
Looking through recent pictures of him, he looks mostly normal up until right around mid-January and so I wonder if it was a coincidence that we had him looked at around that time. We first got an indication something might be wrong when we took him in for yearly vaccinations in early January and we might not have even caught it until things started getting bad at any other point in the year. It’s hard to tell in retrospect whether the tumors had been affecting him before then or if he was just getting a lil old. We were told he was only 3 years old when we adopted him, which would put him at 10 years old now but the last few vets we took him to think there’s signs he’s much older, more likely something like 15 years old.
When our current vet was suggesting we had our newer cat tested for FeLV, he very awkwardly explained that if the test came back positive, we “ought to consider that [we] don’t need this cat”.
This also has reminded me recently that I don’t nearly have as much photos as I should of my wife, who unfortunately does not like being photographed; might have to step up doing it secretly.
Early tally is a little over 1500 pictures of Zeus, and that’s without most of what my wife also took.