I remember the moment my cat died. Zhivago was lying on his stomach when the vet injected the morphine. He stood up suddenly as if he was trying to escape death’s grasp, even though it was merely the vet’s hand grasping his hind legs. As the morphine kicked in, he slowly lowered his body. She injected the poison. I had watched the life drain out of him all morning, and as she euthanized him, I watched his two glazed-over eyes become two empty circles.

I watched as his pupils dilated, so much so that I could no longer see the vivid green-orange in his eyes that I had become so familiar with over the last 16 years. The eyes I had stared into and communicated with for my entire life…I watched as they became inverted black holes: absorbing nothing and reflecting everything. His black-and-gray fur that I had stroked when I was happy, sleepy, sad, angry, and everything in between…I watched as it went limp. I watched as his leg muscles, which had contracted due to stress, lost all semblance of strength and energy. I watched them relax and lose their former suppleness.

Of Zhivago’s last seconds, I remember every one.

I lay down and rested my head by his, like I always had for 16 years. I wrapped my arm around him and waited for his paw to move on top of my hand, like it always had. This was all second nature to me, and when I didn’t get a response, I was veritably confused. Where was his paw? It had always responded to my movements. And then I realized – he’s dead. His paws don’t work anymore. So I opened my eyes and manually moved his paw, from its resting place to on top of my hand. And I felt his palm. Still warm. I lay there for what felt like an eternity.

I stroked his fur, and I whispered “I love you” so many times it would have lost meaning in any other situation. But I meant it, every single time I said it.

I don’t know when I changed positions, but I ended up on his other side, facing him. I stroked his cheek with my thumb, gazing at every detail. I retraced all of the lines I had come to know so well for 16 years. The face I had memorized, the face I had loved, the face I had called home…I cradled his head in my hands and kissed his little brown nose. I whispered “I love you” so many times, yet it never lost meaning. Then I let go.

His head dropped to the blanket with a thud. There was no shake of the head in protest, no sneeze or gentle movement back to his original position. Just a thud as his lifeless skull dropped. I did this twice more and let out a cry. My sister looked over. She picked up his fluffy tail, one of Zhivago’s best features, and let it fall. Thud. His tail didn’t whip back into his curled position like it always had. That’s when it truly hit us. He’s dead.

My sister and I had been heartbroken since the day we scheduled the euthanasia, but now we felt lost.

I don’t think we realized how much of our interaction with our cats is response-based. It felt like second nature, the little things—the flick of his tail, the movement of his paw…it was how our world worked, and when Zhivago’s body stopped responding it felt like our world stopped working. We didn’t know anything anymore. Everything we knew felt wrong.

At some point, my family had to leave and I was left alone with Zhivago, who lay in front of me still and lifeless. Of our three cats, he was the only one who truly loved being held. So I picked him up like I always did, and was shocked when his tail obeyed gravity, stunned when I had to adjust my elbow to keep his head up. I lay down on my bed—his deathbed—and cradled him on my chest.

He felt like inanimate fur and bones, but I kept him warm. I let out a gasp. And then…I don’t know what happened. But I started irrepressibly sobbing, louder than I ever had before. I screamed at God, asking him why he had taken my best friend from me. I screamed at the world, because it had stopped working the moment Zhivago’s eyes became glass spheres. I shuddered in pain, and I legitimately thought that I was dying from heartbreak.

It felt like my heart had been sliced every which way and fed to the wolves. My lungs didn’t work, and my body was on fire.

I sat there lamenting my cat’s death, and even in such a poignant moment I thought to myself, damn I really look like a soap opera right now. I truly felt like a soap opera. I always watched grief on TV; I had watched Meredith lose Derek and Susan lose Mike. I had always laughed in the back of my mind, because they looked so comical sitting there, screaming and crying. But in that moment I realized how dramatic grief has to be sometimes. And so I bawled and screamed and sobbed until I had nothing left in me. Nothing. No tears, no voice, nothing. I was empty, like Zhivago’s eyes.

My family came back soon after. My mom said her goodbyes. We put him in a blanket and put that blanket in his cylindrical box. It felt almost inhumane and mechanical, the way we morphed his body into the box’s shape. I folded up the letter I had written to him and tucked it next to his head so that he could read it later. My sister did the same. We gave him a fake white flower. We covered him with the blanket.

Then uncovered him and gave him a final kiss. One last look at the cat I had known since before I knew anything.

My sister and I carried his box to his grave. We wrapped his box in plastic, three times to protect him from the wolves, and placed him in the ground. We covered him with dirt and some stones and sticks. I kissed the stones—one last kiss. And then I sat there. I wanted to keep him warm, six feet below. It must be cold down there. So I sat with him until it was dark. I whispered “I love you” so many times he must have heard it. He never responded, but I know he heard me. I know he loved me.

And a month afterwards, I can still feel his love. I still talk to him, and visit his grave to keep him warm. My world is sadder, and lonelier, but it’s working again. And as much as I have cried, I no longer feel empty. Zhivago is with me every moment of every day, and even though I miss his green-orange eyes and his little brown nose, I’m okay.

It’s okay. Zhivago died, but I’m still going. And as Meredith Grey once said, “the carousel never stops turning.”

I’ve lost a lot of loved ones, and I’ve gone to more than my fair share of funerals. I’m no stranger to death; in fact, I’m practically friends with it. Which is why I was surprised to feel so confused when Zhivago’s paw didn’t move, when his head dropped. That genuinely baffled me—not that my dead cat didn’t move (if he did that would be creepy as hell)—but I was so surprised to feel so lost. Remember, death isn’t anything new to me. I’ve watched three people die in front of me. When they stopped responding, I didn’t feel this lost. I felt sad, of course, but my world kept working. When Zhivago’s tail dropped to the blanket without protest, my world broke. And after a month of reflection, I’ve finally realized why.

Our relationships with our friends and family is largely communication through language. Most of our memories are conversations. So when a loved one has died in front of me, I’ve always been saddest that I’ll never talk to them again. Seeing their limp limbs didn’t faze me, because our relationship wasn’t based on their movements; it was based on their voice.

But our relationships with our pets is primarily communication through movement.

As much as I think I’m a cat whisperer, I can’t actually speak their “language.” And so most of my memories of Zhivago are of our cuddles and our movements. When Zhivago’s body went limp, it contradicted my entire relationship with him. It felt like everything we had was gone. I felt so lost because I had prepared myself for the reality of never speaking to him again; that was what I knew how to do. I hadn’t realized that the hardest reality to face would be the loss of our physical communication.