Today, relief comes at a cost. Her pain is gone now. Her eyes are closed. A serene peace and slumber has taken her to distant lands in silence and warmth. She will be able to run and pounce and play again.

She is free.

The parents look down at the stillness and know that there is peace now for their fur baby, their first child. Tears stream down their red faces. There is relief, but, my God, the heaviness and the weight and the rawness of this is too much too bear. They had witnessed her everything, from infancy to senility. It was all of life wrapped up into warmth and purring. And now coolness. It came so quickly, too. Two weeks ago she was pouncing and jumping as always. Then. That thing came. That thing that has taken so many of all species. That thing that slithers in like snakes in the sand and burrows deep inside. It is never satisfied until it goes down with the ship.

The child who never experienced the cold permanence of death screams in shock. He was not ready. He, perhaps, would’ve never been ready. But he was there to make her comfortable. The sweet, gray, ball of fur. The tail that he pulled when he was still waddling. The back he stroked. The body that purred. The love he felt.

The drive home is in silence, only broken by whimpers from all three.

“She’s not in pain anymore, Bud,” the father says to the boy.

No one has the strength to respond.

At dinner they barely eat. Every instance of home is a reminder of absence.

They wait for her to meow for her treats. Instead, the father pours what was left in the bowl into the trash. He must pack the bowls and toys away to donate.

They all lay in the same bed together. It is not a night for independence. They wait for the pressure of tiny paws to pounce onto the bed. They wait to hear her purr.

But they will not.

And that’s okay. It has to be.

Because now, she is chasing her brothers and sisters in a meadow far from cancer or cold tables or lack of appetite. Tonight she is hungry and energetic and a kitten once again.

Tonight she has relief of her burdens.