In August of 2010, my grandmother and I were out thrifting, and we came upon a new thrift shop down the road. We went in, and it turned out they also had a cat playroom, with cats up for adoption! We went in, and there was Topaz in all her beauty. I called my mom and begged, and eventually, she relented. I filled out an adoption application, and by the next day, Topaz was home. My dad, however, was still out of the loop, having stayed overnight at his work. We called him once we had Topaz settled in, and before my mom even said hello, she said “Brady, you can’t be mad. She’s already in love.” And all he said was, “What new animal did you bring into my house?!” He tried to put his foot down and say no, but we said wait, look at this picture of her, isn’t she so cute? And texted him her photo. We knew he caved because he said “I’ve always wanted a cat like that!” Just like that, Topaz was home.
She was originally an inside-only cat, but she yearned for the outdoors, and we already had a few outdoor cats, so we let her roam when she wanted to. She loved to hunt everything, but especially green lizards. She had a very specific meow that could be heard down the block that I knew meant exactly: “Sarah, come help, I caught a lizard and it bit me on the lip and won’t let go, come get it off please.” And dutifully I would go find her and release the poor lizard (usually just for her to go find it again and start the whole process over). One day, she made this distinctive meow, but it was ever so slightly off. I figured the lizard had jusr chomped down weirdly and went to go find her…with a fish hook in her lip! Where she got a fish hook, on a quiet suburbian street with decidedly no fishermen in the vicinity, I’ll never know. So we rushed to the vet, with me hysterical, and she was unhooked. I guess she didn’t learn her lesson though, because as soon as she was feeling better, she was back catching lizards and they were back catching her again.
After several months of her being outside, she started to gain weight around her midsection. She got bigger and bigger, and afterwards, my mom told me she thought Topaz must have a tumor to swell up that big. Then one day, she walked in the house skinny as a beanpole. Uh oh. I picked her up and flipped her over to find the telltale bare circles around her teats. Kittens? How? She was fixed before we got her from the rescue! But all signs pointed to kittens. Likely in our attic. Topaz was not in a leading kind of mood, and those kittens were silent. We couldn’t find them anywhere! Danny, a childhood friend who was staying with us, whom I consider my brother, had the brilliant idea to tie a small string to her tail so we could follow her straight to them without her knowing. Finally, we found a pile of four of the smallest, cutest kittens we ever did see. We called the rescue asking how this could happen, and after regaling the director with this story, had only one thing to say: “Are you sure they’re hers?” We still laugh about this to this day. Turns out, when Topaz and her siblings were getting vetted at the rescue, someone mixed up some paperwork and marked Topaz as spayed when – lo and behold – she was not. Once the kittens were weaned and she was ready, we had her spayed and gave the kittens back to the rescue (to many, many teenage-Sarah tears), and we all joked that if she had kittens again, they’d have to study her as a specimen to see how she keeps regrowing uteruses!
Topaz was there for me through my first kiss, every heartbreak, moving away to college, meeting my now-husband, losing my mom to cancer, graduating, graduating again, moving to Texas, getting married, and every day in between. We had 16 wonderful years with her, as much as we wish it could be 116 years, and she brightened every room she walked in. Between “gremlin-ing” every scrap of paper and cardboard she could find, and knocking everything off the counter to tell us she wanted food or water or attention, she knew what she wanted and how to get it.
Throughout her life, she was a trouper. She had some big health scares. She caught calicivirus from a foster cat who was a carrier we brought home, leading us to find out she was FIV+. She had glaucoma in one eye, resolved only by enucleation, when we found out the eye had stage 1 cancer. She had herpesvirus flare ups that required the nastiest medicine (all medicine was the nastiest medicine, to her). She began developing arthritis a few years ago, so she had to get shots to help alleviate the pain. She conquered every last one of the health scares. But she was getting tired, so when we brought her to our vet a few days ago and she was showing signs of end stage kidney failure, we knew we were getting close to the end. She stayed in the kitty hospital for a week and a day, with bloodwork numbers going up and then down and giving us hope, but when she stopped wanting her favorite treats, the vet called and said we were at the end of the road. We brought her home on Friday, June 12, and even though she started eating a little, we knew she was ready to rest. We gave her the best last day ever, getting every treat she could possibly want, sitting outside in the grass feeling the warm sun and cool breeze, feeling all the love and kisses a cat could possibly feel, and then as the sun went down on Saturday, June 13, 2026, she went to sleep. Everyone says their cat is the best cat ever, but I think Topaz really was. We will love her forever.
