Dust particles gather over my chest in the darkness. I don’t have to open my eyes. I can smell them: talcum and wood shavings. It’s the scent you had, from the day I brought you home from the shelter to the last day, when I buried my face in your fur before handing you to the nurse. I wouldn’t be able to handle it if you died with your eyes open. This is what I told the nurse. She nodded and turned away, your striped tail hanging like a comma from her arm.

That morning before I took you to the vet, you’d jumped up onto the table when the kids were eating breakfast and shit everywhere—an explosion of sticky, rank feces that speckled their faces. I was calm amidst the chaos. I bathed the kids, and once they left for school, bleached the walls and floors and chairs and table. Then I called your vet. You hadn’t used your litter box in a year, even though I cleaned it after every use and tried different kinds of litter. I was tired of shampooing rugs and washing globs of crap off the kids’ feet in the middle of the night when they made their way to the bathroom in the dark. Your vet said incontinence was common in geriatric cats. So was weight loss, and your weight was dropping. I hand fed you salmon and bought you special food. Nothing worked.

Shitting in the middle of the table, the vet said, was likely psychological. Felines, like humans, can experience cognitive decline as they age. I pressed the phone to my ear and sat beside you in the cushioned alcove of the bay window. Your marigold eyes reflected the clouds drifting over the cornfields. The vet said it was understandable if I didn’t want to prolong your decline. She said it was the humane option. She said these things and I felt empty as starlight.

My four-year-old, who you never knew, snores gently beside me. I slide my hand across the mattress to find her leg, which is warm and soft.

When you were four years old, you bolted out of the house one evening when I came back from campus. You were missing for a week. I went out every night, calling your name, crying into the phone when friends called. What would I ever do without you?  Your sweet head-butts. Your company while I bathed, and when you’d sit on the edge of the tub and drink the little cups of water I offered from my hand. Your fur, which never lost its kitten downiness.

The dust has settled on my chest. I take a jerky inhale and its weight shifts. When I open my eyes, electric wisps crackle in the darkness.