How The Third Kitten was Lost.

We had three kittens, and one of them died.

He begged for her to be okay.

Driving in the car at sunset, watching the reds and oranges stretch across the sky, trying to hold on to the day, Ryder begged for his kitten to be okay.

“Please don’t let her die, mom. Please. She can’t die.”

He was sitting in the passenger seat of the car, with Opal held tenderly on his lap. She was curled into a loose ball, and barely moving. There were patches of burned fur, and bloody wounds all over her body. She looked like she had been ravaged. But she was purring.

I gripped the steering-wheel tighter, and flicked my eyes over to the GPS. Our ETA to the emergency vet was almost 30 minutes. I wasn’t even sure if we should be going. I didn’t think Opal would survive her injuries.

But she was Ryder’s kitten, and he wanted to take her in.

“We HAVE to mom. Look at her. She’s in pain.” The tears poured softly down his cheeks, in stark contrast to how hard he was hurting. With his sweet kitten. For her.

Opal had fallen down into an open register - an air vent in the floor. It was only left uncovered for a few minutes, but kittens are swift, and quiet, and adventurous.

We were in the car, flying along the highway, trying to get to the emergency vet so, at the very least, Opal could get some pain medication. It appeared that, at some point, she had made her way to the furnace. Ryder could not control his tears when he looked at her. “I just feel so bad for her, mom.”

I was in agony for her, too. Not just because I knew that she was in pain, but because I was carrying the weight of the fault. I pulled out the old vent cover, and I walked away to unwrap a new one. I turned, walked back over to the vent, and slid it into place. It was perfection. Relief and satisfaction. And moments… mere moments of an uncovered hole in the floor.

Brock pulled Opal out of the register in our bedroom - one that had not yet been changed over to the new covers. She had been wandering around the vent system beneath the house for at least an hour. “She’ll be fine,” I thought to myself, not having seen her yet, “It can’t be that bad.”

It was that bad. And when we arrived at the emergency vet, they took her back and gave her medication in order to make her comfortable and to do a thorough exam of all of her injuries.

The vet came back into the room without our kitten, and told us exactly how bad. “She’s so small, and so fragile. Her wounds are extensive and the burns are deep. She would need to be hospitalized, and kept for several days, and she still might not make it. We are talking tens of thousands of dollars.”

Ryder did not sob. He did not whimper. He did not cry. He sat next to me, still as a statue, and did not make a sound.

I asked the Vet if he could give us a few minutes alone to talk about what to do, and he nodded and quietly left the room.

…and Ryder collapsed.

I held him as he sobbed and sobbed into my arms. 13 years old, and he loved that kitten more than he’d ever loved another living thing. She was perfect, he told me. The most perfect kitten that had ever lived. She snuggled on his lap, and slept in the crook of his arm, and followed him everywhere.

“We can’t let her suffer, mom.”

His words took my breath away. In the span of just under an hour, he had gone from, we can’t let her die, to we can’t let her suffer.

“What do you want to do, buddy? Do you want to try to hospitalize her? Leave her here, and see what they can do? We may still lose her, and she’ll be alone and scared…”

He nodded slowly.

“…Or,” I continued, “Or we can let her go. We can hold her as she goes. We can tell her we love her, and that we are so sorry, and we can love her for every single second of her life. And she wont be in pain, and she wont be scared. She’s yours, and you get to decide.”

He was silent for a few moments, quiet sobs shaking his man-sized body despite just coming out of the near side of puberty. He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. He let his head fall forward. And then he whispered, “We have to let her go.”

---

Over the next hour, we took turns sobbing as we held our sweet Opal girl. The prettiest of the three kittens, the loveliest of the gem sisters, the very first pick of the litter. I sat next to my son as he howled out his agony, keened out the grief of saying goodbye to his sweet, sweet girl, knowing that I couldn’t fix it, and that I couldn’t hold any of it for him, and feeling the ache of it all deep in my chest.

When the veterinarian gave her the medications that stopped her heart, Ryder pulled his baby girl up to his chin, and held her tightly, and sobbed into her fur. He kissed her over and over. He whispered, “I’m so sorry, Opal. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”

An earthquake in his soul. In my own. An echo of a small boy, held and loved and bathed in tears. An echo of please forgive me.

And then the earthquake passed. And Ryder caught his breath. And he looked at me with swollen eyes and the shadows of aftershocks in his soul. “What do we do now, mom? We can’t just leave her here.”

Someone came in to tell us our options for cremation or burial, and Ryder announced firmly, “No. She’s ours. She’s coming home with us. We will bury her on our property.”

The tech seemed surprised, but they had no problem with our choice, and not long after, we were driving that same trip we had taken a few hours before in reverse. The sun was down, and Ryder had his kitten in his lap, unafraid to hold her even unto death - continuing to love her beyond this life.

He cried and told me again how special she was. He cried and told me again that he felt so bad. He cried and told me anew that he hated that she had to die. And I sat the entire time in awe at his strength, and his beauty, and his love. I have never, ever been so proud of my son.

When we arrived home, he brought Opal to each of his siblings to say their own goodbye. He put a toy in her paws, and wrapped her in a special blanket, and then grabbed a shovel. “Let’s go,” he said.

The entire family walked outside with him in the full dark as he marched towards Eleven’s Tree. We watched as he dug a hole in the ground for his kitten. He owned the whole thing, and thanked his father as Brock stepped forward with another shovel to help.

Ryder gently and lovingly laid Opal into the earth. He cried again as he set her down. He looked at me with agony when he realized that he had to cover her again, that the point was burial. That he was letting her go. “I’m so sorry, Opal. I’m so sorry.” He said it over and over again. He stopped to catch his breath, and then slowly, slowly, poured a shovel of dirt into the hole. Slowly, slowly, she was gone from sight. Slowly, slowly, we said a final goodbye.

Everyone stood at the fresh grave for a few minutes, not ready to leave the sacredness and sanctity of the ritual. We hugged, and then turned to go back inside the house. Before I left, I paused, and knelt down. I thanked her again, that sweet Opal girl. She was a gift to us. Her life was a gift.

Her death? That was another kind of gift.

(Posted with Ryder’s explicit permission.)