Pazuzu

In March of 2007, I went with my friend Rain to the San Francisco ASPCA. I was in a transition period in a lot of ways; for the first time since I’d graduated college, I suddenly found myself without a full-time job or contract. The loss of a social circle from work, big changes in my personal life, and uncertainty about what I was going to do next meant that I was lonely and had too much time with my own thoughts. This was an exploratory trip to maybe consider someday getting a pet cat.

Going through the facility past all the cages was almost too much for me, and I almost had to leave. Even knowing the SF ASPCA’s outstanding reputation, and knowing that everyone inside was extremely well taken care of, it was overwhelming to see so many animals that needed my attention and needed me, specifically, to take them home with me. Except for one.

One cage had a beautiful gray and brown cat, with an immaculate coat and big fluffy ear tufts. According to the post-it on his cage, he was about one year old. He calmly came to the front of the cage to check me out, not particularly eagerly, just with a kind of mildly intrigued curiosity. “Huh, a new guy.”

I’m likely mis-remembering or over-romanticizing the day, but I recall that the facility had a play room that let the humans and the animals give each other a test drive before committing to adoption. He was playing with one of the workers, who had a cat dancer that he was happily chasing around. The other cats in the room were all being as manic as you’d expect cats in a wide open space to be, but this one gave off a strong vibe of being calm and content. With some minimal prompting, he came back over to check me out — “Hey, you’re that guy from before. Sup.” — and I immediately knew I had to take him home with me.

I remember driving home and asking Rain, “I got the best one, right?” And she agreed that I absolutely did. She got him a little green catnip-filled guy, and it became his favorite toy.

That probably didn’t all happen on the same day. I think I remember it as one just because I knew pretty much immediately that I’d be taking him home. I wrote about it on here, after I’d had him home for a few days. I don’t know if the subtext of that post is as clear to everybody else as it is to me, but I was already desperately trying to set boundaries and establish a respectful emotional distance. To make sure that he remained “my pet cat,” even though I was already completely in love with him.

I named him Pazuzu, both after the demon from The Exorcist, and more directly from the gargoyle in Futurama. It seemed appropriate as the name of a force of chaos who was also really cute. There would be many, many times over the years that I would call out to him in Professor Farnsworth’s voice, sometimes worried, more often just for fun. I don’t think he ever watched the show, but I’m pretty sure he would’ve appreciated the reference.

My husband and I had to say goodbye to Pazuzu on June 11, 2026. He was my best buddy for 20 years. And every single day for 20 years, I’ve said good morning to him, and hugged him, and wished him good night. And on the days when I couldn’t do it in person — which I’m now realizing were far too many — I was always thinking about him. I love him and I miss him so much.

If I had my preference, I’d leave it there. Over the years, I’ve seen many friends, family members, and even strangers say that they’d lost their beloved pet, and my heart breaks every time, and every time I’ve thought “I can imagine how they feel.” But of course I can’t.1I keep being reminded of a scene in the movie Brainstorm, where a scientist realizes that she’s dying, and she decides to record it so that other people in the lab can experience something that no human has ever been able to share. So I always offer my condolences with the same reminder, which sounds trite but which I am certain is true: “The more it hurts to lose them, the more you know that they were loved.” I know it’s true because it’s deeply unfair, the way that all the truest things in the universe are.

But I feel like I owe it to Pazuzu to make a public record of just how special he was. There’s only one other human being who knows him as well, and I have the advantage of having known Paz a few years longer. He never learned to blog or even write (he never seemed particularly interested, and honestly, good for him), so it’s up to me. People need to know that he was, objectively, the best.

Because I can already feel my brain going into self-defense mode, re-contextualizing and even outright re-writing memories to try and turn him back into “a very, very good cat.” I suppose that’s easier than coming to terms with losing my best friend.

Years ago, when he was much younger, and I was basically a different person, and the idea of not having him around was so completely implausible that even I didn’t think to worry about it, I described myself as a dog person who’d accidentally gotten the world’s best cat. I said that it was so painful when I lost my dog that I never wanted to get so attached to any animal that I’d have to go through that again, so I got a cat hoping for some emotional distance. That backfired spectacularly.

And I’ve already lied in this post. I said that I thought about Paz every single day, but I didn’t. Any more than I think about gravity, or oxygen, or my pancreas. They’re just constants. I don’t know how I’d live without them. I’d been thinking that he was with me through three different homes, but that’s not accurate, either: I’ve had one home in all the years since 2007, and it was “wherever Pazuzu lives.”

I was surprised by how rarely I’ve mentioned him on here, until I realized that of course he’s been present in everything I’ve written since 2007. When the universe has gifted you with a magical, immortal friend, you don’t think to write about how he makes everything about your day-to-day experience better, any more than you’d think to write about your personal connection to gravity, or oxygen, or your pancreas.

My original plan was to write a very, very long blog post about my life with Pazuzu, my favorite moments, all of the things that made him special. Once I was ready, I’d share it. And by the end, it’d be incontrovertible, objective proof that he was the best cat. Even the people most skeptical that you can ever have a genuine connection with an animal as independent and inscrutable as a cat — the kind of person I used to be, before I met him — would go away understanding that this wasn’t just a story about a sentimental man who’d developed a co-dependent relationship with his pet. And the people who didn’t need convincing could at least enjoy some cute pictures.

But then I went and sat outside on the balcony. And I didn’t hear him scampering across the living room to race me out the door, or looking at me through the dog door or the window to signal he wanted me to let him outside. And he didn’t trot over to his favorite place on the balcony and sit with his eyes closed, being blasted by the full warmth of a sunbeam. And I didn’t have to coax him back into the house, eventually giving up and just picking him up to force him to come inside (or in his later years, help him up the step). And I didn’t say “I love you, buddy” and then set him back down on the floor so he could trot off to do whatever was next on his agenda.

Which is weird, because all of that stuff happened multiple times a day, pretty much every day, for years. So often that it became routine, and when I thought of it at all, I thought of it as an unremarkable part of my life, instead of thinking of every single damn time being a special gift.

I realized that I couldn’t possibly sum up everything that made him special in one go, and that I don’t want to. I don’t even want to get to the point where I’ve got a healthy sense of distance and can reduce twenty years to a respectful and heartfelt summary.

I’d rather keep being reminded of little memories, indefinitely. And really think about how significant they are, instead of taking them for granted. After all, I may have loved him immediately, but that’s true of me with many cats and dogs. It took a long time for me to realize that whatever it means for anyone to have a soul, Pazuzu has one, and mine is connected to it.

So this is at least partly a cat blog now. I used to imagine Paz as being too cool to have any patience for twee cat influencers on the internet, but it’s silly to think he had no patience for sentimentality, considering how devoted he was to snuggling. Of course, I don’t owe it to anyone to convince them that I had a special bond with Paz, but I do owe it to him and to myself to keep remembering how it was built over years full of dozens of special moments. And again, worst case: everyone can enjoy some cute photos.

I love you, Pazuzu, and I always will.

1
I keep being reminded of a scene in the movie Brainstorm, where a scientist realizes that she’s dying, and she decides to record it so that other people in the lab can experience something that no human has ever been able to share.

1 I keep being reminded of a scene in the movie Brainstorm, where a scientist realizes that she’s dying, and she decides to record it so that other people in the lab can experience something that no human has ever been able to share.