Tamar was still alive yesterday but a lot worse than on Friday when I’d last seen her. She would try to roll her head toward me and attempt to mew at me several times, but all that would come out was a hoarse sigh. I gave her some water, and she was too weak to fight. She swallowed it and seemed content with it. Other times I stroked her head. She still loved being stroked. I only stroked her head so I wouldn’t hurt her broken back. I told her I was sorry I didn’t know what she wanted, though she obviously wanted something from me.

She rolled over a couple times. It was cold yesterday, so I put her in a sunbeam. When the sun went behind a cloud, I brought her over by my desk and covered her with a towel to keep her warm. Her labored breathing would move the towel up and down.

This morning the towel was in the same position I’d left it but still. I asked Duncan what I should do with her. Usually, dead cats get thrown on the other side of fence by the railroad tracks. “I think she deserves a proper burial,” he said. Maybe he figured I needed a proper burial. So I carried the box and a shovel out to the hollow and found a gopher hole the dogs had started digging up. The ground was soft and sandy, and I had a hole in no time. I positioned her body in, told her I was glad she was out of pain, and turned my head and filled the hole back in with the dirt I had removed plus some more from a pile outside another nearby gopher hole. Then I put a piece of sandstone that had fallen down the cliff on top. That’s why we have gravestones, I thought, to make it harder to dig up a grave. Then I mended the fence that crosses the stream with the multitool I keep in my back pocket and carried the shovel and box of towels and rags back up to the house.

The good thing about kittens is that you don’t have to dig a very big hole when they die.