On Aug. 26, 2024, our eldest cat, Cordelia, 15 years of age, died. I so want to make this remembrance of her sentimental, soft, sadly joyous. But before I can do that, I must make one thing clear: she did not die of her own volition. We, the Marvelous María Beatriz and I, decided her fate, so the correct locution would be—what? Euthanized? Killed? Murdered? Put to sleep? Put down? I haven't found a felicitous enough phrase that makes me feel good about our decision, but perhaps there isn't one because I am not meant to feel good about the act, about having the power to cut the thread any time I want for whatever reason I want—a power as degrading as it is awesome. Yes, with "great power comes great responsibility," but what does that mean in this instance? It means (I hope) that I made the decision to end Cordelia's life because it would end suffering and give her comfort (if not at the moment, then in the near future, because her lab work showed that her liver and kidneys were losing function) and that that decision was in her best interest, not mine (that is, not looking at the potential financial costs for care but looking to ease the life of a being I loved and cherished). But under this hope lurks a more intractable condition of the relationship we have with those we call our pets. People debate whether pet owners should call themselves "owners," which makes the pet a commodity, but make no mistake, we are their owners, and they are our commodities. (Even the word "pet" is not benign, indicating something held in thrall, subservient.) Now, there are many ways that owners can treat what they own, and perhaps a saving grace of the owner-owned relationship with pets is that it holds out the possibility of "tenderizing" us, making us a touch less self-centered and blindered, a touch more spacious and unselfish. And that when we do decide to end the relationship, we do so not out of convenience or an ROI but something like genuine love for something that is not us, outside of us, completely other. But still, the indissoluble it is there: I decide. And that just sits burred and sonic in my brain and gut. I am not meant to feel good about it, an instance where doing the right thing (and it was the right thing, given the arc of her health and age) brings not self-pride and relief but uncertainty and rue. We stayed with her to the end. During our last weekend with her, we couldn't help but note that when she ate her fifth or sixth or seventh serving of the day (she ate constantly but gained no weight), that that would be last time she would do that with us. As with everything she was accustomed to doing, going about her time without any doubt that it would continue the next day as it had happened during this day. At the vet, they ushered us into a special room. The doctor explained the process and gave us plenty of time to be with her prior to her receiving a mild sedative, to be with her while the sedative calmed her, to be with her when the doctor found the vein and injected the anesthesia, to be with her for the last 30 seconds of her life as the drug slowed her heart and breathing and then stopped them completely, to be with her as we held her body one last time before handing her off to the technician for cremation. Her ashes now sit with Banquo's, who died on Feb. 26 of this year, in a similar red cedar box in a small altar we've built of their boxes, overlooked by a smiling Buddha and memorialized by a metal sculpture created by an artist friend of ours. A small-beer sadness, to be sure, not at all similar in size and scope to the tragedies drowning the world around us. But her passing is part of the growing story for both of us, moving into our seventh and eighth decades, of the loss and passing of people and things we hold dear, that hold us up. The Marvelous María Beatriz's phrase for it is "La muerte es la putada." It is, indeed, always getting under our skin and reminding us it can't be forgotten or foregone.