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About 14 months ago I put my cat, Jules, up for adoption. I drove him and Smalls, my other cat, to the PetSmart in Silver Spring, Maryland, where a woman who said she was going to meet me canceled that morning and had me meet instead with a store employee. The employee was probably 18 or 19. Jess took Jules, because he was heavy, and I took Smalls inside the store, in their respective crates. I think before I even got to the door the tears began to come.

We had to make several trips to the car to bring in all the toys, food, bowls and boxes that I’d collected for them. I had packed up Smalls’ prescription food and Jules’ extra large litter box which was sparkling clean from me scrubbing it that morning. It probably took us 3 trips in and out of the store. We had to walk by the checkout counters where everyone eyed us with curiosity because we were making so many trips.

I cried the entire time. And it was not the type of crying where you’re in the movie theater with friends and you know you can hold it in just enough to not be heard and it begins to hurt in your throat. Nope. I could not hold it in. The eyes kept watching us.

It was a blur from there. They had put my two cats in separate cages in the little show-off-the-large-pets room. I remember seeing other cats in cages. I knew as soon as Jules and Smalls were separated that they probably wouldn’t be adopted together as I’d kept specifying in the paper and to the employee, and earlier to the lady who was supposed to meet me there. Smalls was fine without Jules; she was independent. But Jules always needed someone.

Jules and a sibling, Strider, were adopted by my old roomate and I. We knew it would be difficult separating them later when we parted ways but I was selfish and thought that they could just get over it because they were just cats. About 4 months after I moved out of our apartment into a new one, one without Strider, I knew Jules was not getting over anything.

He was so needy all the time. Constantly following me around and meowing. And when I finally gave him the attention he was begging for he acted like a dog and would get up in my face and lick me. At night, when I was living in the first apartment, Jules had figured out how to climb up my loft bed. He did this when he was young and wouldn’t sleep at night for more than an hour or two. The other hours he’d be making noise moving things around on the floor below me. I remember this annoying me at 3am but then later thinking it was worth it when he’d finally climb up into my bed and curl his body next to my head, laying on my pillow because he needed to be close to me. I would lie still and start to get warm with his presence. I knew I couldn’t move because if I rolled over he’d leave. After being settled for a few seconds, he’d sigh.

But he scratched at stuff. Especially after moving out of the first apartment. I really think he was going through some sort of separation anxiety… that never seemed to end. It irritated me that he couldn’t just relax. He was reminding me of me. So I adopted Smalls to give him company and on many occasions he’d sleep next to her when she was a kitten, but he was still attached to me.

I wanted nice furniture. I knew that I’d eventually think about this when I moved to Virginia with Jess. The ride down to our new home I remember Jules crying in the back seat and me talking to him, as if he even understood what the hell I was saying. Smalls had peed in her crate. She peed a lot. On carpet and couches and the floor in the laundry room. I was constantly cleaning up. This is what eventually caused her to go on prescription food.

For some reason it got to be too much. I was always stressing out over the cats. They were destroying stuff and it was destroying me. But I allowed it to. They were just simple animals who live purely on instinct.

I decided that adopting them out was the only way I could relax. I knew, somehow, that after it was all done with that I could move on just like I do with so many other things in my life. I knew that I make a big deal of things when they’re upon me but when they’re done they turn out to not be so bad. This could be no different, right?

It took me weeks to find a suitable place (a no kill shelter) to take them. No one was having it. All shelters are overcrowded as it is, and mostly with kittens that people find outside. No one wanted adult cats. I should have made more of an effort to find a home for them myself, instead of a shelter. Knowing what I do now, I could have used Craigslist or some other local service to do so, but we were new here and I didn’t really know what I was doing.

The reason I cry still, after 14 months of this torturing myself, is that I know I could have done better; that I did not do my best with them.

There’s no real conclusion to this, except to say that I don’t think I should have assumed something about myself. Because I can change just as quickly, and I can learn something about myself that I didn’t know just like I can learn about someone else.

It seems silly, to be this upset, in the background of my life, about Jules being gone. For a while I volunteered at the Humane Society socializing with the cats who never seemed to get adopted. They were happy there. And I was happy being with them. But it wasn’t the same and I knew I was doing it to try to make it up to myself. I still occasionally talk about Jules and Smalls with people as if they lived with me. It’s fucking sad and I just can’t seem to get past it.