I should never have named them Hamlet and Laertes after two literary characters who died young. I thought those were clever names. But one shouldn’t mess around with archetypes. Archetypes are serious stuff. Both Hamlet and Laertes died unexpectedly a few weeks ago. They were nine months old.

Hamlet had been sickly from the start. He had come to me skinny and underfed and scared of everyone and everything except Laertes. I fed him off my finger those first couple of weeks, moving my other hand closer and closer until he let it touch him while he ate. The entire process had to be repeated whenever trust was shattered as it was when I tried to pick him up and later after every tortured trip to the vet.

Laertes came around after the first few weeks. He stopped running from me. He let me pet him. He let me pick him up for a few seconds. He let me pick him up and hold him. He purred. Hamlet watched the progression of intimacy with Laertes for months until the day came that he tentatively curled up on my lap and dared me to push it any further.

Meanwhile Artemis glowered from afar.

A few weeks before they died, Hamlet started losing weight. I bought baby kitten food and fed him off my finger again. Both Laertes and Artemis gained weight. Then both kittens stopped eating while Artemis remained in caloric heaven. I made the awful decision to not treat Hamlet but see if his little body would heal although he was so weak he was finally letting me hold him. I took Laertes to the vet.

The news was a shock. Laertes had a liver disease not uncommon in feral cats for which there was no known treatment. The vet recommended euthanasia and in a fog, I agreed. I whispered goodbye to Laertes.

That night I put Hamlet alongside me in bed. Through the night, whenever I awoke, I reached for him and felt his purr. He had rarely purred in his whole life. Occasionally I felt him move and re-position himself against me. He was so light he was barely a wrinkle on the sheets. Finally I felt his little body spasm and emit a piteous cry. I felt him. He was gone.  I put him in a little bed that had been his safe space when he first joined the household. By morning rigor had set in.

During the awful next day I imagined Hamlet and Laertes sauntering across a bridge. Waiting on the other side were Freudy, Winston, Eugene and Edith, other cats who are still a part of me. The kittens are in good paws now.

Here’s my eulogy for the boys of Elsinore:

Laertes the sunny orange kitten, often slept on the back of the sofa. When I was on the sofa, he would wake, yawn and reach his paws towards me. I’d pull him onto my lap. He would rub his face against mine. I’d tuck his head under my chin. He would purr. We could sit like that for fifteen minutes at a stretch, both of us in a state of bliss. His purr was a song.

Little Hamlet I can see walking through the hall into the kitchen. Cats don’t move in a straight line unless they are charging at something. They saunter: a little bit to this side, a little bit to that side. Hamlet was a long-legged, long-tailed but exceptionally skinny black kitten, a miniature of Artemis, my big black 14 year old cat. Frightened of everything, he had learned to move with embryonic bravado through the house as if his name was on the mortgage in imitation of Artemis who actually does own the house.

Since the disease was not treatable, they were going to die anyway. They might have died on the streets of Yakima, cold and scared. They might have died in the shelter after being kenneled for five months. Instead they got to have brief, bright lives with me.

I know that is worth something. It is worth life. It’s what life is. Brief.

I am still sad.

Hamlet and Laertes