Whirlwind continues: 2:08 AM, yet another goodbye

Grief hasn’t left. It’s only changed shape—sometimes heavy, sometimes sharp, sometimes almost invisible… until the silence gets too loud.

Apr 21, 2025

April cracked me open.

I sensed it was coming for me—for us—but like skin peeling slow: raw, aching, a quiet kind of pain.

In January, I lost my father-in-law.

In February, my father.

And now, in April, I’ve said goodbye to Jojie, my cat of 19 years—my little pumpkin pie, my bud-companion, my shadow. He passed away at 2:08 AM on April 18th. I was there with him. In fact, all of us were there, watching him return to the One who have sent him to us. One second he was breathing in my arms, and in the next he was gone - his body just a shell I once kissed, stroked, held close.

If you're new here, let me introduce you to my tiny-pawed, 19-year-old cat.

He was my rescued baby, a tiny, sickly kitten I found when I was 20. We already had more than five cats when he came to our house, so Mom asked me to take him to the National Zoo (Zoo Negara), where I was interning.

I brought him to the aquarium, thinking I could care for him while I worked. But that very day, he had a bad bout of diarrhoea—explosive, chaotic. We had to shut the whole place down to clean it. One of the staff, not the gentlest of people, gave me a fright:

“Get that stupid cat out of here, or I’ll throw him in the river.”

So I brought him back home again. I told my family I’d take care of him until he felt better—or at least until we found him a permanent home. Months passed. I grew to love him. I named him Jojie, after the nursery rhyme my mother used to sing to me:

Georgie Porgie

“Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie,

Kissed the girls and made them cry.

When the boys came out to play,

Georgie Porgie ran away.

Just like that, he became my paw-baby”

He wasn’t the kind of fancy-looking cat people swoon over—just a regular feline-boy. But I swear to God, he had a soul. One that saw you. One that tugged at your heart, left you aching when you were apart. We loved him. Maybe that’s why I adopted him anyway.

He’s a little cross-eyed, adorably so. I once noticed this when he was 2 years old, tried to jump onto a coffee table like his other cat siblings—he hit the edge and fell off during jumps. Yet he grew up, into a huge, muscular boy—close to 7 kilos (maybe even 9 on his “good day”). Fierce and cheeky—he once chased a neighbour’s big black dog that all the neighbourhood kids were afraid of. Naughty-fearless Jojie. My tiny boy.

When I was 30, I moved out and my family kept him - I was told it was better to let him stay at home, with familiar faces. As he got older, it became too dangerous to let him roam freely, so he was given a cage to live in at home. Each time I visited, he’d come to the edge of his cage, stretch out a paw, and let me stroke him through the tiny metal bars.

Eighteen months ago, I visited my mother and found his left eye red and bulging. He had caught COVID and was terribly sick. That’s how he lost his eye.; that’s when I brought him home to stay with us. It felt right to do so. We tried everything to make him comfy and help him heal. Sleepless night, emergency vet runs, mid-night ER dashes, false alarm of him collapsing and painful scene of him getting seizure. He had epilepsy and was covered in fleas that had nested for so many years undiscovered. Almost every vet we met told us he only had few months (probably less than 6 months to live) but slowly, he transformed from a sad little thing into a happy old man, instead. It tooks a tiny-village just to care for him. Dr. Kwok, his vet, once said, “You’ve done a great job, Mom. Jojie looks happy and is a well-loved cat.”

Then this month, just when things began to settle—when the winds of grief from losing my father and father-in-law began to still. I noticed something. He wobbled.

He grew quiet, withdrawn. One night, I watched him fall while trying to get into his litter box. We rushed him to the ER - vet diagnosed him with CKD (chronic kidney disease). We knew he had kidney issues before,but things had worsened now. He needed daily drips. I wasn’t willing to leave him at the hospital. I couldn’t imagine the nights without him; I knew he’d be scared if left alone in unfamiliar places. So we brought him back home, determined to care for him ourselves, so turned our living room into a little hospital—made it cozy and easy to move around. I wanted him to feel comfort - soft mats, warm light, familiar smells, with us close by. Home.

He seemed okay for a couple of weeks—until the bleeding started.

His gums. His mouth. It wouldn’t stop.

We rushed him back to a different vet that’re closest to us, to beat the evening traffic. Gently handled by the doctor and nurse, his eyes stayed locked on mine the whole time—as if he was trying to tell me something I didn’t want to hear.

“I know it’s painful baby. I promise, it’s gonna be okay, baby. I’m with you, no matter what,” I whispered.

I slid my fingers under his paw. He curled them in his, weakly—not like before.

The doctor gave meds, said it was likely a tooth pressing into the gum. “Keep him comfortable. It should stop soon.”

Convinced that he is going to be okay, we went back home that evening of April 17th, I held him in my arms. His eyes never left me. I cried as I tried to feed him. All week, whenever I fed him, held him, stroked him—he just kept looking at me, knowing.

After feeding him, I set him down. Something strange, he stood for a moment, then turned to Atik, my husband; who sat next to me. They always had a funny love-hate relationship going on, but that night, Jojie leaned into him and waited to be stroked and held. He carried and pulled him in his arm, he didn’t fight back as if he wanted ‘A’s hug. Then my sister joined us too. She laid him gently on a shirt, cradled in her arms. The blood hadn’t stopped.

“The doctor said it’ll stop soon,” she said. I nodded, tried to believe her.

‘A said, “You should sleep with him tonight. Don’t feel pressured to fly with me this weekend—I can’t let you be away from him.” . My sister was supposed to baby-sit Jojie for the weekend, but we changed the plan and I agreed to stay home with Jojie. So we set up the tent again and camped in the living room, like two weeks ago. I watched him through the mesh as I fell asleep, close enough to hear his breathing if I listened carefully.

Half an hour before 2:00 AM, he meowed. I woke to see his paw on the net, reaching for me. I reached out. We touched. I was so tired, I fell asleep again—just briefly.

Then I heard it: a loud sound, a movement. He’d made his way to the litter box.—wobbly but quick—and didn’t come out. He meowed loudly. I rushed and pulled him back into the tent. I knew sometimes he’s too exhausted to return to his tent, so I’ll help to carry him back.

He lay there, panting, blood dripping from his mouth. I called my sister. We panicked. I cried so loud I don’t even bother it could wake our neighbour. We sat around him. In panic and disbelief, I kept saying, “What’s going on? Help him!” And then…silence.

My sister touched his belly. “Is he gone? We got to go hospital now. Please” I screamed at her and my husband. She cried and nodded, confirming that we had lost Jojie. Then his jaw moved one last time—like a seizure—and then... he was still.

I screamed. I held him, crying, “Is he gone? Is he gone?!!!”

“No, no, no... Jojie.” I was out breath and angry at everyone around me. I refused to let my husband to come closer at first, I wasn’t ready.

He was still warm. Jojie wasn’t moving. He’s gone.

Just like a baby, I carried him out of the tent. He lay still in my arms, eyes closed. And in the loudness of our cries, the house felt unbearably quiet.

I kissed his face. “Baby, Jojie, wake up. Please.”

It was the same pain. The same empty silence I felt once, when I watched my dad’s monitor flatline. That unbearable pain I experienced not too long ago in February.

Not again, O Allah. Please... not this again.

My husband didn’t know what to do. He ran, picked up Louise (my sister’s cat)—who had been hiding behind the washing machine all day—and held her tightly. Tears streamed down his face. My sister stood by the tent, shaking her head in anger and sadness. She covered her mouth, trying not to sob out loud. Then she ran to the bedroom and called Asyraf, her boyfriend, and started screaming, crying into the phone.

My husband slowly came from behind and hugged me and Jojie. I sunk myself into his arm.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before, it’s my first time seeing a cat dies” he said.

We wept in each other’s arms, Jojie still in mine.

For almost an hour, I held him, watching his face. He looked so innocent and pure. So empty. I hoped for a miracle—that God would send him back to me. “We’ve got to bury him soon, Along”, my sister came back to the living room. I nodded.

So we called my mother. We brought Jojie to her place. We buried him with a small ceremony. I wrapped him in my shirt and Atik’s, and we laid him in my mom’s backyard around 4:30 AM. I couldn’t bring myself to lower him into the earth. I froze each time I tried. My husband held me.

“He’s just sleeping now. Let him rest, okay, sayang?”

“It’s his time”, my mother said gently from behind us.

I sobbed. And finally, I let him go. I gently laid him down and covered his face with the shirt, sobbing in disbelief. We buried him together. My sister started pulling the soil. We took turns. Eventually, he was buried, return to earth. We went home in silence, cried ourselves to sleep.

As I fell asleep, I whispered to myself,

“We had a plan, Jojie. You and I. I was going to throw you into a pile of snow. I promised we’d leave this country together. The 3 of us. But you left me first.”

The memories are still fresh—feeding him, holding him, whispering our little made-up language. A language just for us, my husband used to laugh thinking I’m just making silly noises. I told him, Jojie understood because it’s our language. Only us could understand each other in our own world.

That Friday morning, my husband convinced me to fly down south with him later that weekend, just hours after Jojie passed. I wasn’t going to go earlier. I had planned to stay. I wanted to stay back and be Jojie’s caregiver. I was going to miss that flight. I would miss any flights, if I have to. But Allah had other plans. It’s like Jojie wanted me to go—to carry on with life without him.

“You can’t be at home. I don’t want you to cry alone all weekend”. So there we went boarded the flight, gone for the weekend, and I brought his Dinosaur cone with me, hugged it in my sleep—the one he wore whenever he is sick. He used to scratch at his bad eye, so we kept it on him.

We came home Sunday night. For the very first time, I opened the door, greeted Salam to home, and had no where to look for him. I could only smell him. Feel the stillness. The grief.

Atik grabbed my hand, pulled me into a hug, and cried first.

“I know baby. I know. It’s different without him. We need each other, okay?” he said.

I nodded. It’s in my nature—I struggle to express emotions. I’ve been told I don’t show empathy, that I’m cold. But my husband knows me, he continues to try.

I am in deep pain.

Grief hasn’t left. It’s only changed shape—sometimes heavy, sometimes sharp, sometimes almost invisible… until the silence gets too loud.

I wrote this for Jojie when I was at the airport on Friday afternoon, in the stillness of the day that no longer has him in it: