It feels like a million years ago now, the night I ended up with a cat I called Scuppers. He was a one-in-a-million cat, and when he died, I was desperate to have him back. So desperate that I started looking at cats that might be like him.

And that’s how we ended up at Friends of Strays in late 2018, where I’d read they had a Maine coon (that’s what Scuppers was) who, if you were to believe their description, had Scuppers’ personality: cuddly, wanting to be near you, friendly, easygoing.

That cat, though, had apparently never read his own PR and, in a way only a cat can, told us where he thought his marketing team could go. But underneath his cage a tiny little thing stuck out her paw to us, and I was smitten. She looked almost like Scuppers.

“She’s FIV-positive,” the shelter worker said. I didn’t care. While this wasn’t the cat distribution system at work — last time I checked it doesn’t count if you go to a shelter seeking a cat — this cat had chosen me.

We adopted her, took her home, and changed her name from Autumn to Mizzenmast.

Once in the house, she proceeded to find a small hole in the drywall behind our hot water heater. She hid there for days.

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In time, she came around to the other cat — St. Elmo’s Fire, Elmo for short. She eventually understood that our two dogs, Calypso and Banyan, had no interest in hurting her. And when Hobie Cat told us in no uncertain terms that she lived with us now, Mizzen accepted that. She was pretty chill about animals.

She wouldn’t go near other people, though, at least not for the first six years we had her. Catsitters would stay at our house when we went on a road trip and report that the only reason they knew she hadn’t run outside was that her food dish would be empty.

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The shelter records didn’t include her most interesting feature: Mizzenmast was mute. The only sound she could make was a gravelly rasp, which is perhaps the most disconcerting thing you can hear in your dark bedroom at 2 a.m.

While she liked me well enough, this cat made Barry her person. She understood that I could, if pressed, pass for someone allowed to feed her, but I was never her preference. Every night when we sat on the couch, she’d make a beeline for him for brushing and some serious snuggling.

“It’s because I feed her,” he would tell me, but we both knew it was a lie.

In the last year, she started to show her face when other people were in house. She loved my mom and our cat sitter Chelsea, but Barry was still her sun and moon. I ranked in there somewhere, and I’d love to say “right after Barry” but honestly, I’m not so sure.

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Her floof came in about a year or two after we adopted her, and that’s when she really started to look like Scuppers. She looked nothing like the shelter cat we adopted, except for color. She was gorgeous and striking but still remarkably tiny. We started calling her a “mini Maine coon.”

According to our vet and from what I’ve read, lymphoma in cats with FIV isn’t that unusual, and it’s usually a treatable type of cancer. When our vet diagnosed Mizzen with it almost three weeks ago, we initially thought we’d get her treated.  Except her lymphoma was a little different than most cats, showing up in places it often doesn’t in cats. On top of her FIV, she also had a heart murmur. Treatment would be different for her and could take a few tries to get right.

We made the heartbreaking decision to not put her through that. She was 11, which isn’t old for a cat but also isn’t that young for an FIV-positive one, as I understand it. She was sick, and every day she looked worse and worse. We left the veterinary oncologist last Wednesday with comfort measures only. All the comfort Mizzenmast wanted, though, was Barry.

Sunday night, Mizzen slept next to Barry. At 5:30 Monday morning, she woke up and jumped off the bed. When Barry went to check on her, she had died.

I know people who won’t have a pet because of the heartbreak at the end, and I do understand that. But I don’t think I could ever deny myself the good things about having a pet. They take a piece of your heart, and of your soul, with them when they die, yes, but they give you so much while they’re here.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Thank you for being our cat, Mizzenmast. We will always love you, and we will never forget you.

And tell Scuppers we said hi, and that we still miss him horribly, too.