In the early morning hours of November 1st, 2025, my world shifted forever. My soul cat, my sweet baby boy Widget, lost his brave battle with GI lymphoma, just two weeks after his diagnosis.
Everything happened so fast that it still feels like a blur. Two weeks isn’t enough time to process, let alone prepare for, a loss of this magnitude. One day you’re navigating a frightening new medical reality, and the next you are facing a quiet house and a devastatingly empty space in your heart.
I cannot keep writing about it. My life is darker and I want to burn this whole damn world down.
Let’s be honest: I think I own four cats. But deep down, I know the truth. I’m just a well-trained, food-dispensing, tent-building minion to a furry feline cabal. Around here, cats rule the house, specifically Widget, Fern, Ash, and Toadie. They run the show, and when they’re not napping in sunbeams, I’m pretty sure they’re plotting global domination.
Widget: The Soft-Pawed Puppet Master
Don’t be fooled by Widget’s wide-eyed innocence or his tendency to hide when he thinks anyone is coming to visit. This brownish tabby is the emotional manipulator of the crew. He’s a certified Mama’s Boy, which means he has mastered the art of guilt-tripping me into getting up early to give him his breakfast. He will cuddle up next to me while I’m sleeping, purr with the loudest motor you’ve ever heard, and then make biscuits on my face.
Despite being scared of knocks at our door, the thought of getting flea meds put on the back of his neck, and the cat carrier, Widget’s influence is mighty. He’s the emotional glue of the operation, the quiet schemer. If there’s a a piece of fabric or laundry to lay on, Widget is on it, strategically maintaining morale (mine) while keeping tabs on the other three.
Fern is sleek, black, and 100% chaos with claws. She is the house panther, the ninja-in-residence, the “hold my crunchies, I’m doing something reckless” kind of girl. While I’m clinging to the arm of the couch watching her scale the living room curtain with Olympic confidence, Fern is silently calculating her next mission: perhaps leaping from the fridge to the pantry in pursuit of a sky raisin.
She’s also ridiculously sweet, until she goes full jungle mode and takes down what’s left of her felt Santa Clause toy like she’s on National Geographic. Honestly, if Fern decided to lead a revolution, I’d probably just step aside and offer her Churus for the cause.
Ash: The Sleepy Enforcer With Kitty Kankles
Ash is our long-haired white and grey cloud of fluff. A daddy’s girl through and through, she pretends to be athletic like Fern but… how do I put this gently… she doesn’t always stick the landing. She aims for “graceful jungle cat” and lands squarely in “pillow-shaped beanbag.” And yet, she tries. We love her for that.
She spends a good 80% of the day napping. And her chubby little kitty ankles are illegal levels of cute. Ash is the velvet-gloved enforcer of the house, quiet and cozy but fully capable of asserting control when needed.
Toadie: Tortitude in a Chunky Package
Toadie came to us under tough circumstances when my mom passed in November 2022. She has what cat people respectfully call tortitude, which means she’s spicy, opinionated, and unafraid to issue a formal hiss for anything she doesn’t like or agree with, which is just about anything and everything.
But here’s the thing Toadie doesn’t want you to know: she loves living with us. No, really. She actually enjoys having cat siblings, at times. She plays with them. She naps with Mike. She maintains her tough exterior, but the moment she curls up for a nap near the others, you know she’s fully integrated into this furry cult of personality.
I’m Just the Staff
You know how every secret organization has a powerless but useful assistant? That’s me. I scoop the litter. I distribute the licky treats. I referee the early morning play fights and late night zoomie Olympics. My phone is full of blurry cat photos I took while whispering “look at your little face” like a complete fool.
These four cats rule the house, quietly, sneakily, with toe beans and whiskers. Widget pulls heartstrings. Fern keeps things spicy. Ash runs on naps, Churus, and Daddy-lovins. Toadie keeps us all humble. And together, they’ve probably already formed a secret government and are just waiting for the lasers to be installed on the Roomba.
Months before Nefarian got sick, before we knew anything was wrong, I had told Mike that we should adopted a female black kitten and name her Fern. I said it a few times, just to put it out there if we ever decided to add another cat to our family.
Two months after Nefarian passed away, Mike showed me a photo of a black kitten available for adoption at our local Humane Society, and they had named her Fern. It felt like fate, but it had only been two months since we lost our sweet Nefarian. I wasn’t ready. I knew adopting a cat wouldn’t be a replacement for Nefarian, but it was hard to not feel guilty at the thought of even adopting another cat so soon after Nefarian passed away. Especially when all I wanted was to have Nefarian back. I mulled it over for several days and was leaning towards not adopting her, but Mike talked me into it.
On June 20, 2022, we went to the Humane Society for a meet and greet with Fern. On the ride there, I broke down crying, which made Mike think I didn’t want to adopt Fern, which was the furthest thing from the truth. I was just a bit emotional and missing Nefarian like crazy.
We got to the Humane Society, and they showed us to the kitten room. They introduced us to Fern, who was a teeny tiny baby, and we instantly fell in love. We brought her home that day, and it took about 10 seconds after we opened the carrier for her to make the house her home. She has settled into our home nicely, and is both oh so sweet and oh so crazy. She is a house panther, my magical kitty. Widget doesn’t mind her, though she does try to attack him (in a playful way), which he doesn’t like. He does, however, love when she lays beside him so he can clean her.
I don’t know how he did it, but I believe that Nefarian sent us Fern to help heal our hearts after his passing.
This isn’t the type of post I wanted to make, far from it. Our sweet Nefarian was diagnosed with a tumor at the base of his heart on April 5th 2022. Needless to say I was shocked, devastated, heartbroken, when the vet told me that the x-ray showed the tumor. There wasn’t much more they could tell me, since they couldn’t determine what type of tumor it was or how long he had without a biopsy. Our vet said that, at the time, since he was doing well (still eating and drinking, not acting sick, and not losing weight) she didn’t really think a biopsy was a good idea since that could set things off. She did, however, say that the tumor was significant in size, but that she couldn’t give us a timeframe on how long he had. It could be a few weeks, a few months, or even a year.
I brought Nefarian home, crying the entire way, and then spent most of that day switching back and forth from holding Nefarian and crying, to Google searching heart based tumors in cats to learn as much about it as possible and how to increase their life expectancy.
The morning of April 21st 2022, Nefarian had labored breathing so we rushed him to the vet. It wasn’t news we wanted to hear. His lungs where filled with fluid. The vet said he had only a few hours to a day at most and that we needed to start thinking about letting him go. We made the most difficult decision to let him go and not extend his suffering for just a few more hours.
Honestly, I really can’t continue writing about Nefarian’s passing. It took months for me to be able to write this much without bawling. Just know that we will always love Nefarian, and there isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think about him.
May the 31st marks 3 months since Jedi passed. I’m doing okay, I guess. As well as can be expected considering I’ve lost my soulmate, and yes, Jedi was my soulmate. I truly believe that soulmates are not always romantic in nature, nor are they always human, and I know that Jedi was in deed my soulmate.
I hide my emotions about him being gone fairly well when I’m around people. But then I get into the shower, shove a washcloth in my mouth, and scream until nothing comes out and cry until I can no longer produce tears. During the day my mind is occupied with work so I am usually okay, but at night, when everything is quiet and there’s nothing to push the fact out of my mind that he’s really gone, well that’s when it’s the hardest.
But I have to keep all of that to myself. All the despair, the pain, the wanting nothing more than being with my baby again, that has to stay hidden. Cause people suck, people are assholes, and people keep trying to get me to take their cat(s), as if that would make me feel better.
I already have two cats that I love dearly, and I wouldn’t give them up for anything. But having Nefarian and Widget doesn’t make Jedi’s death any less painful, so why the hell would they think “getting another cat” would help me “heal”. It takes everything in my being not to put my fist through their face when they start hinting (some even come right out and say it) about me taking their cat or getting another cat.
I don’t expect people to understand my love and devotion to my cats. Hell, I don’t even expect people to respect it. What I do expect is for them to not be inconsiderate pricks. And I really don’t think that’s too much to ask. Especially since I am very vocal about how much my cats mean to me, and just how important Jedi is.
It’s been close to two months since Jedi passed away. I can honestly say that it doesn’t get any easier, I’ve just had to learn how to live without him. And that right there hurts so damn much. It feels like I shouldn’t continue forward in my life without him. He was my best friend, my constant for almost 12 years, and going on with my life feels like I’m turning my back on him, like I didn’t really love him. I know that sounds ridiculous ’cause I know how much I love Jedi, how much he means to me, but I just can’t help feeling that way.
And I have all these things going on in my life that I want to share with him, and taking part in these things without having my beautiful ginger baby with me just feels so wrong.
I hope y’all had a happy Valentine’s Day. We actually celebrated Valentine’s Day on Friday because Mike had to work Sunday. We went up to Petco to get my Valentine’s Day gift from him, a cat tree. I have been wanting a cat tree for our kitties for a while now but always put it off for one reason or another. So I was extremely happy to finally have it. And all three cats are enjoying it. Especially Nefarian and Widget. Jedi, who will be 10 years old this spring, isn’t as excited about it as the other two. He’s more indifferent. He will lay on it here and there but is more content sleeping on his blanket beside me. Nefarian and Widget, however, love it so much. It was definitely worth the price tag and I am so happy that Mike got it for me.
Remember when I wrote about the pregnant feral cat and her three kittens? Well, I have an appointment to get the mom cat fixed so she can continue her feral life without the worry of getting pregnant again and found homes for the white kitten and the ginger kitten. But the striped kitten, well we decided to keep him.
Meet Widget, the newest addition to our family. He is a playful and extremely loving kitten who doesn’t like to be left alone. He has a huge appetite and loves playing and sleeping under the covers.
It took a lot of convincing on my part but Mike agreed to it and Widget was brought indoors on October 28. He was confined to Raven’s bedroom for a week until his appointment with the vet. I didn’t want him around Jedi and Nefarian until we were sure he didn’t have FIV (Feline Immunodeficiency Virus) or FeLV (Feline Leukemia Virus). I had made arraignments with my mom beforehand so that if he just so happened to test positive she would give him a home. Thank the good Lord, Widget tested negative for FIV, FeLV and heartworms. The vet said that he looked healthy and (along with the vet tech) keep remarking how pretty, soft and well behaved he was. Widget has an appointment on December 4 to get neutered.
After everything came back negative, we started to introduce Jedi and Nefarian to Widget. Jedi couldn’t care less about him and his more concerned about what Widget has to eat. Nefarian, on the other hand, hates him and tries to attack him every chance he gets. At the moment, he is still semi confined to Raven’s bedroom. Throughout the day, we allow surprised “visitations” between Nefarian and Widget. We are taking things slow and hoping that Nefarian will accept Widget into the family sooner rather than later.
