Remembering Sis "Persistence"

Sis (Persistence)

January 1ish 2011-February 14, 2026

"After an improbable life full of surprises and questionable choices, Sis died this morning after a couple of days of illness. Her body had been strong, willing to live through incredible adversity, until it just couldn't anymore. I am forever grateful to her vet team who cared for her over the last couple of days with the urgency her needs required.

Many of you know the absolutely bonkers story of how she came to be in my family, but in case you haven't heard, her origin story pretty much sets up the pattern for the rest of her life. She was a stray hanging around my house that I saw a few times in the summer of 2011. She was small, young, and always alone. I never saw her with another cat. I think that last fact made a difference, in that she didn't really know how to "cat" very well all the time. But I'm already digressing. The day I moved from my house here in Springfield to Lawrence to start school at KU, she was curious, watching all the comings and goings of the moving guys. She even came in the house once to look around, but I ran into her in the hallway and she skedaddled back outside. Then about half an hour later, one of the moving guys said she had gotten into the van and made her way far enough back they couldn't reach her. And of course, she wasn't paying us any mind, no matter how many treats we promised or threats we hurled. So when it came time, we closed the door, drove to Lawrence, and she was the first thing unloaded off the truck. There's so much more that happened over the next couple of weeks, but she got the name Persistence from my mother (thanks for setting that precedent), and I called her Sis.

She was spunky, opinionated, and took very well to being a pretty princess who had her (nearly) every whim attended to, though she never lost her love of the outdoors. She absolutely could not stand to be cooped up for more than a day or so. She needed to feel the grass under her feet. It was for her mental health, and for mine, too.  She got cranky without the sunshine and the breeze on her fur. It didn't matter how hot it was, and some days how cold it was, she would find a spot to snooze on the porch, or roll in the dirt, or climb in a tree, and she was happy. She was so very happy to be outside.

When she was three years old, she suffered an injury that changed her life and mine. For the remaining 12 years of her life, we would need to adjust schedules, furniture, routines, and expectations of each other to take care of her bladder needs. Honestly, she adjusted almost immediately. It took me a lot longer. The day she had to have her tail amputated, the vet told me it would likely take her a few days to adjust to the new sense of balance, so she might be clumsy and wobbly for a while. Well, it took her all of 30 seconds to figure out her new body. The second day after her tail surgery, she ripped off the baby sock that was on the little nubbin to protect the stitches and threw it all over the kitchen in one of the rare instances of her playing with a toy. That showed us. And that's pretty much how every day of her life was.

She was a creature of habit, and you could just about set your clock by her stomach. Dinner time was 6 pm SHARP, and if I was late, she let me know. I rarely had to guess what she was thinking. She was a pretty good communicator. Sometimes an over-communicator, and we frequently butted heads when she would be "communicating" loudly and repeatedly while I could not attend to her needs at that exact second. She also in the last few months, built a morning routine that included trying every faucet in the house for her morning drinking pleasure. I think she liked the bathtub the best, but she still had to try the bathroom sink, the kitchen sink, her fountain, and any glasses I had laying around. She was nothing if not thorough.

Her evening routine included sitting on my lap or on my chest right up in my face, and wallowing all over me until she was comfortable. She liked me to kiss her forehead right above the bridge of her nose, so I'd get a lot of little head bonks every night while she sought affection. Then she'd fall asleep, and when her body would relax, she'd pee on me.  I often put a blanket underneath her before she settled down, but it didn't always happen. It wasn't uncommon for me to need to change my clothes or wash up my bed multiple times in rapid succession because I had failed to put down a waterproof blanket in time. That part of her disability sometimes made things really hard. I don't know that I'll miss that part of it, but I will feel the absence of taking care of all the tasks that became necessary to manage it all. Her care took up a lot of space in my life, and I have no idea what to do with myself right now.

As I held her this morning after the last injection, the vet checked her heart the second time and said, "She's slowing down." In my head I thought, "It's the first time in your life you've slowed down." She charged her way through life with all the enthusiasm she could muster. She argued until she got what she wanted. She told the vet staff who was boss. She didn't slow down until she came crashing to a halt, and that was as it should have been. I'm grateful she only had a couple of hard days, and I'm so grateful I could bring her home for her last night and she could die in her home, on her couch, in my arms.

I'm generally a dog person, and I never expected to ever have a cat. People have asked me if I'm now a cat person, and I have always replied that I was this cat's person. I couldn't have planned for her, but now I can't imagine going through the last 14 and a half years without her. She had so much personality stuffed into that tiny body, she made so much noise barreling through the house during her daily zoomies (even this week!), and everywhere I look in my house I see evidence of her. That little six-pound cat has left a massive hole, and I will never not miss her.

I believe Sis was lovingly created by the One who knew how it would all go, and I believe that when my body rises in the new creation, Dooey and Sis will be there with me, healed and happy. This separation, this grief, is evidence that the world is not the way it was meant to be. But it is temporary. I will have my Little Girl and my Baby Boy again, and there will be no more death, no more separation, no more pain. In the meantime, I wait with hope and tears.

Rest in peace, Little Girl. You fought and fought and fought the good fight. I'm so glad you were mine." - Dr. Heather Nelson