Goodbye, Maggie. You were a good cat.

Wednesday, May 27, 2026: We took Maggie back to the animal shelter where we had adopted her in 2010 and had her put to sleep. She was nearly twenty years old and totally blind. We hated to do it, but she was on her last legs, and the blindness confused her. She would yowl mournfully when she couldn't find out where she was.

A strange thing happened when we got to the shelter. Maggie had been meowing in her carrier all the way there, but the moment we arrived, she went silent. We never heard another sound from her. We said goodbye to our cat and left, already feeling bereaved.

The next morning, something unexpected happened while I was fixing breakfast. For years, I’d been in the habit of giving Maggie a bite of scrambled egg, dropping it on the floor in front of the stove. That morning, as I scraped the eggs onto our plates, a small piece slipped off and fell to the floor—right in that same spot.

I like to think it was Maggie, saying goodbye in her own way.