Photograph by Qi Yang/Getty
Almost 19 years ago, a colleague walked over, and from the look on her face, I knew she was up to some mischief. She engaged in small talk before she got to her point. She told me that a friend had found a litter of kittens under their front porch; the friend had rescued the kittens, but the mom had made an escape.
I knew immediately where this was going.
A couple of weeks later, I was sitting on the floor of her friend’s living room with five kittens scampering about. One, the runt of the litter, crawled onto my lap and stayed there until I put it back on the floor and agreed to adopt it. “Don’t you want two?” my friend said. “That way, they’ll never be lonely.”
No, I didn’t want two. But before I could stand up, a second cat crawled up on my lap, began to knead my belly, and then laid down as if he belonged there.
When I got them home, Little Bit jumped up on my ottoman and looked at me with wide, innocent eyes. I reached for my camera to take a photo. As I was about to hit the shutter, the other kitten jumped up behind him and, with a devilish look in his eyes, raised his right paw to smack his little brother. That was the photo I took. And so, he was named Smackie Boy.
Little Bit considered my lap his domain. Even though he was the bigger cat, Smackie accepted that. He usually waited until Little Bit had vacated his perch. It often felt like a conveyor belt: one cat off, the other cat on.
One afternoon, Smackie Boy jumped up and Little Bit refused to leave. To avoid a lap war, I lifted Little Bit up and put him on the floor so Smackie could have his turn. After Smackie had settled in, Little Bit made a loud noise in a hidden corner on the other side of the room. Smackie lifted his head in curiosity, then hopped off to go see what all the commotion was about. I spied Little Bit to the left of my chair. He jumped up and settled back into his spot on my lap. Smackie gave his brother the nastiest of looks and sulked away.
Once Little Bit passed away nearly five years ago, it was just Smackie and me. He began to spend more time sleeping on my lap, especially when it was cold. I was away from home for eight days recuperating from hip replacement surgery; when I returned, he spent the entire afternoon lying on the top of my chair with his left paw draped across my shoulder.
From a young age, the cats demanded to drink water from the bathroom faucet. They also learned to turn on the faucet when they were thirsty. Since they showed no aptitude for modulating the flow of water, my solution was to set the faucet to a constant dribble. Whenever I walked into the bathroom, Smackie would jump up on the counter and impatiently wait for me to brush him. When he grew tired of the brush, he would step into the sink, lower his head, and drink.
Over the past couple of years, Smackie Boy began to slow down. He could no longer make the jump from the floor to the bathroom countertop, so I put a chair next to it. Toward the end, even that became a challenge for him.
Nearly everyone I’ve talked to has asked, “Are you going to get another cat?” Experts believe that’s the exact wrong thing to say; we need time to process our grief after loss. We’re not talking about a broken coffee maker that you go to the store to replace, and then all is well. I understand our tendency is to want to fix each other rather than offer simple empathy, and that grief is uncomfortable. But it’s necessary for healing.
In this issue, we delve into the world of pets, and the deep relationship often forged between an animal and its human. You hang out together. You play together. Many times, you even sleep in the same bed. I have found that I weaved most of my daily routines around Smackie to one degree or another. I have found that I now have a lot of empty spaces in my life.
It’s a chilly spring morning as I write this. And I miss my little buddy.
This article appears in our June 2025 issue.
