Written at 7 am on 8/5/2025, roughly six hours before he passed
For the longest time, we had on our fridge an image clipped from a magazine, one of this adorable little black kitten. He (I suspect) is of that age where the rest of their body has yet to catch up with their head, as if they have macrocephaly. They look like they have fallen asleep standing up. I swear I can look at that photo and hear the low rumble of it purring. It is like we wished on that photo so hard over the years that it made a kitten materialize.
We were driving home from the grocery around 5 pm on October 10th of 2010, when I saw a few yards in the distance this tiny black shape moving in our direction, right along the double yellow line in the middle of the road. Imagine Mad Max, but remade with a kitten in the lead. He had blood coming out of his nose and running down his face. His right ear was torn and bleeding. Whatever had happened to him, he looked like he had already had enough of life in his short time on the planet so far. But we put him in the back seat, where he hissed the entire time it took to get to a vet. I’m sure he thought this was a vicious and terrifying sound, but I’m afraid it was quite adorable.
We had managed to get him into the vet at a Petsmart minutes before they closed for the day, and I will forever be grateful to the staff who stayed after hours to take care of him the best they could. But they don’t keep pets overnight, so we went to a nearby 24×7 animal hospital, which is where he had multiple surgeries. At times, he was on the knife’s edge of not making it, yet our little fighter pulled through.
Among the surprises revealed by X-rays done at the hospital was he had a belly full of bones. Whether that was from hunting or scavenging, he was obviously quite the survivor. One large white spot in some images caused great concern among the doctors, who thought it might be a hole in an internal organ. Instead, it was just one especially large animal skull. I recall one of the docs marveling as to how this little guy could have even got that into his mouth.
When he was finally on the mend, we brought the kitten home and he was named Sebastian. The reasoning is, at the time of our first encounter with him, we had been listening to the song “I Can See Your Future” by Belle & Sebastian. But he ended up with multiple monikers, as people are wont to impart upon cats, and he is more often than not called Bear, not the least of which for the big, bad swagger he would assume as an adult.
At home, he settled in quickly, despite being this funny little kitten body atop long gangly legs. Like that photo on the fridge, he also had a disproportionately big head at the time. But he was smart, and sometimes demonstrated his survival skills. During a particularly bad thunderstorm, a frantic search all around the house ended with the discovery he had hidden under the furnace. And staying low has been his general means of conduct, a real-life survival skill in obvious contrast to our other cat, Purrl, who had lived indoors almost her entire life and who chose to remain higher up off the ground when possible.
Then there were the stairs, each of which was taller than him when he first arrived. He had to painstakingly climb each one like it was a giant rock. Then came the day he realized he could run up and down them, landing on just the very edge of each step. He spent the longest time just zooming up and down the staircase, to our considerable amazement (offset by fear he was going to get hurt).
Bear also quickly became the security officer for the house. I can picture him wearing the stereotypical uniform a human would have in that capacity, complete with hat and large keychain on a belt loop. I kinda wanted to make a tiny coffee vending machine for him to stop at when he would do his rounds.
He would largely stand at our screen door when the weather was nice enough to have the front door open. With him glaring at the world outside, it is easy to imagine him doing the two finger “I see you” bit from so many movies. He especially had a fit when a neighbor cat who was also fixed “sprayed” the outside of the basement patio doors, marking our house as its property. I’m not sure if that other cat did that intentionally or obliviously, but it definitely got Sebastian’s attention.
Bear is also a stern taskmaster, giving us the “square-eyed” look when displeased, his eyes somehow forming rounded rectangles. The top of the dining room table has always been off-limits to our cats, so I knew he was pissed when I was sitting there one time and he gently stepped up onto the surface, eyes squared, and slowly stomped towards me. I still wish I could know what triggered that.
He so loves the only home he has known that not once has he ever tried to escape. Trips to the vet were insufferable, given how much he hated to be away from his base for any amount of time. Alas, those trips became more frequent, and each one longer, when he was diagnosed with diabetes in 2000. I though it would kill me to give him twice-daily insulin injections; however, that is done in the scruff of the neck, where they don’t feel a thing. One part of our routine because a curiously Pavlovian response to me getting a syringe out of the plastic storage bag. Sometimes, he would stand at the bowl without eating until I rustled the bag a bit. Only then would he start chowing down.
Cats with diabetes are especially thirsty, but I never made the connection because he drank so much water from the first day he was in his new home. I assume that, of all things that are hard to find in the wild, clean water tops the list. I also wonder if his original habitat might have partially been a storm drain near where we first saw him, as I would occasionally see two tiny, golden orbs in the dark entrance to that pipe. Perhaps I had seen his mom without ever fully seeing her.
Especially dear to Sebastian is water from the Britta pitcher in the fridge. I assume it is special because it is from the inside of the appliance he has been obsessed with since his first days here. Our fridge has always made a random assortment of odd noises, most of them as if it is some type of animal clearing its throat. When he was young, Bear would stand facing this monolith in the kitchen, which would make sounds to which he would seemingly respond accordingly. But there was one terrifying close call involving the refrigerator when my wife couldn’t find Bear one day and she opened it to find him just calmly standing there on a low shelf. I guess human children aren’t the only ones you have to worry about playing in refrigerators.
Other non-human friends included area fans and heaters, I assume both of which because they magically created more comfortable air, but possibly also because they were tall. He would lay alongside them with one arm stretched out like he was a tough guy hanging out with another tough guy. Similarly, there was the time my brother-in-law was here and, while watching a movie together, Sebastian got up and sat between us facing the TV, just hanging out with the guys.
Speaking of TV, there was his odd fascination with anything that ejected and ingested a disc. The blu-ray player was a favorite frenemy of his, and he never seemed to stop marveling over how (or maybe why) this thing kept eating discs, only to throw them up again later.
He also spent a great deal of time as a kitten talking to himself. One of the strangest things I have ever seen was the day he came up the basement stairs, walking along the living room wall as he made his funny little noises. Then he stopped, stood up taller and went “ooo-OOO-ooo” as his eyes went wide. It was as if he had just had the most startling realization of his life. Maybe he did. If so, I wish he would let us in on the secret. Once an adult, he would communicate very little vocally but, if he “meeped”, you knew you were big trouble.
Even as a kitten, he was exceptionally smart. Like any other self-respecting cat, he had no interest in any toys manufactured specifically for the interest of that species. Instead, he loved Lego figurines. I was never sure which aspect of his attacks on them alarmed me more: that he would accidentally eat part of one or that he would break a tooth on that hard plastic. The former was rectified by gluing the parts into one solid mass. Even then, it was only ever a supervised play item.
We would tie a length of yarn around these and drag them under a square of blue egg crate foam (another of his favorite things). He was smart and patient enough to not bother pursuing it as it went under, instead waiting until it was right at the point of exiting the other side. Then he would leap across the expanse of foam and pounce.
It wasn’t too surprising when he figured out how to access his restricted toys by laying under the coffee table and manipulating the drawers from below.
Sebastian also had an interest in popsicle sticks for a while, though I’m not sure how that happened. Similarly, he loved to wrestle with, and bite on, Q-Tips. The latter we once put in a row of three atop the clothes hamper and he evaluated that for the longest time, appeared to form an attack plan, and sent them flying in one go, and in a perfect rhythm. 1-2-3-presto! Similarly, he once methodically knocked some pens off my wife’s desk, which she then restored to where they had been. Once she left the room, she returned shortly after to find those back on the floor and him sitting calmly, as if nothing had happened. It wasn’t enough for him to send those pens to the floor again, he had to be nonchalant about it.
A favorite hangout of his when he was younger was under the massive chest of drawers in the bedroom, and it was from there the sounds of all manner of odd activity would emanate. There were some A/V wires under there but I’m not sure if he was even messing with them. Whenever I would get down on the floor to see what he was doing, he would be upside-down and wild-eyed. I came to imagine this was his lab or workshop.
Strangely enough, he was also obsessed with tools. I hate any kind of plumbing or electrical work, but it was still enjoyable to see him alongside me whenever I had to do such tasks. He would tend to look at the area in need of maintenance, then down at the tools and then back again. So help me, it always felt like he was ready to a grab a tool and just start work himself.
For somebody who couldn’t talk, he had stellar ways of communicating. Some of the best conversations I have had in my life have been with him. And, no, I don’t believe in psychic connections, but there are species other than our own with which one can communicate. You just have to be observant.
One of our most direct means of conversing is the ritual we have most nights of what I call “fort time”. I always read for an hour or so before zonking out. I’ll be there on my back and a sheet tented over my bent knees and he will often get under, turn around three times (always three) and settle in once the perimeter check is complete. I like to think that is one of the few times where he can truly relax, knowing that I am watching over him. When he is especially content, he will stretch out and push the back of his neck up against my butt and his back toes against the back of a heel (or vice-versa if he is turned around the other direction).
I have known and loved so many cats and remember some I have barely known more than I do some people I have known fairly well. But Sebastian is the one I have been closer to than any other in my life. I love him so much that one moment while holding him was the only occasion where I wondered if I was right in my decision to never have children.
For some time now, I have known the end was near. But the end is always getting nearer, isn’t it? It does so even for us. He has become terribly thin, not eating even when he is receiving anti-nausea and appetite-stimulating medications. The spark in his eyes that is him has become muted to the point where I’m not sure he recognizes me. It is hard to believe but, in a few hours after I write this, he will be no more. We have decided to have him euthanized at home instead of traumatizing him with yet another, and final, visit to the vet. I hope this is the best ending we can give him. Even more than that, I hope we gave him the best life we possibly could.
I try to console myself by being grateful for the time we had together, though I am currently dreading a time where he will not be in our lives anymore. But he will always be in my heart: my boy, my Bear, my Sebastian. I will love you always.
