Yesterday we made the sudden, awful decision to let our cat Suitcase cross the rainbow bridge. As we speak, she and Lola are giving each other a single, friendly sniff and then napping on opposite ends of the great Ikea couch in the sky.

She showed up unannounced at my friend Ryan’s apartment complex back around the beginning of 2013. I declined multiple suggestions that I adopt her before agreeing to house her for a weekend while Ryan was out of town. Well, that did the trick.

She went without a proper name for a surprising amount of time. For a good long while her name was Cat, because when she had her 4am meowing concerts, only yelling “CAT!!!” would shut her up. Even when I adopted a second cat—only to discover after agreeing that the cat’s name was also Cat—they quickly became Cat 1 and Cat 2. Finally at the end of 2016, when Billy Kissa visited from Greece, she (the cat) slept on top of Billy’s suitcase the entire week. Billy flatly declared that Suitcase was her name; Billy was right. (Cat 2 was eventually named Sabado, which is a different story.)

She was extremely low-maintenance, even training herself to poop outside instead of needing a litter box. Her flop game was strong. She was approximately 70% fur with a possibly-illegal amount of floof between her toes. She successfully trained me to leave the faucet dripping while I brushed my teeth so she could drink from it. (I explained to her how wasteful this was and spent $50 on a pet fountain, but she was undeterred.)

Letting go of the cats was, no surprise, one of the hardest things about my move to Amsterdam. What made it a LOT easier was Cortney and Jonathan, who became amazing foster parents to Suitcase, and—at the last minute—Sabado as well. They fell madly in love, and when I made the call that it was best for the cats to remain in Texas, they were only too happy to drop the “foster” from their titles. I’m sad that they had to handle the hardest part themselves, and that Kiki and I could only say goodbye over the phone, standing outside Mike’s Theater in Amsterdam after a Coach Rookard show. But seeing her cuddled up against Jonathan in the Zoom window, feeling loved and comforted, was a great comfort to us, too.