Today would have been my cat Trent’s 14th birthday.

Trent passed away on Monday night, so he never made it.

I won’t go into the details, but lets just say that it’s not the way I would have wanted him to go. Both my Dad and I are gutted, and we miss him terribly.

My dad bought him for my 18th birthday, and (being a typical 18 year old) I named him after Trent Reznor because I was all about Nine Inch Nails at the time and it just seemed like the thing to do.

(In hindsight, it probably wasn’t the most appropriate choice. It’s not the easiest name to use for a cat. One syllable names aren’t the best to use in a sing-song, cat call kind of way. Think: “Treh-ehhhhnt”)

Trent has always preferred to be an outside cat. When he was younger, he really was the Top Cat of our street – and he knew it. Cats didn’t mess with him. Dogs sure didn’t mess with him. We had a Chihuahua cross named Pepsi who he used to wrestle to the ground. It was amazing.

(I’m sure we’ve got it on film somewhere, I really should find that, put it on YouTube, make him posthumously famous!)

Elvis sure didn’t mess with him. I remember this one day, before I had moved to Melbourne and just after we had gotten Alice. She was sitting up on a high bench, miaowing to high heaven because Elvis was trying to jump up and get at her. Trent was asleep on my bed but clearly all of the barking and miaowing was getting on his nerves. He strode into the lounge room, promptly batted Elvis across the face with his paw, claws and all. Elvis quickly shut up and ran away. Alice stopped miaowing. Knowing that the job was done, he walked back to my room and promptly fell asleep in his original spot.

You just didn’t mess with Trent.

Trent absolutely adored my grandfather. He would sleep by him day and night, he’d follow him wherever he went (which included walks to the corner shop!) and he provided him with that extra love and companionship that only a cat can. I love him even more for that.

When my grandfather passed away, Trent disappeared for three days. We thought we’d never see him again, we looked for him everywhere. He came back eventually, but you could see in his eyes that he knew my grandfather wouldn’t be.

He’d never really been the same since then. He’d lost a lot of weight and he would keep to himself. He’d become a moody, grumpy old thing – but age should award you some leeway, so we let him be. Every visit to Sydney, I would pamper him with love and attention and affection. He’d reward me with lots of purring and cuddles, until the moment when he could no longer stand being so affectionate, as if it somehow betrayed his new image as a grumpy, moody old thing.

I think he missed me too.

Last Christmas, Trent was really ill. He could barely walk and, while he didn’t appear to be in pain, he was just so listless and lethargic that my Dad was sure it was his time. I didn’t believe it – I couldn’t believe it – he’s just such a tough old thing and he’s survived so much.

The whole time we were visiting with my Dad in Sydney, we nursed him back to health. I made him drink milk and hand-fed him small pieces of sashimi that he began to take more greedily as his health improved.

(Yes, sashimi! Merry Christmas, Cat!)

His recovery was rapid and he became stronger. Soon enough, he was back to his normal, grumpy self. Wouldn’t you know it, it wasn’t his time after all.

So when my Dad called me on Monday night in tears to tell me that Trent was gone, the shock was just too much. Here is this beautiful cat who has been through so much and pulled through time and again, and he was gone, just like that.

On the one hand, it just wasn’t fair.

On the other hand, at least we could have closure. Jarvis had disappeared after a spate of cat poisonings in our street, and we were never to know what became of him. Dinah also disappeared when I was much younger. She had been asleep in my grandfather’s van and when he started to drive into town with my grandmother, she freaked out and jumped out the open window and that was the last anyone saw of her.

Closure or no, it didn’t make much difference. He was gone, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

It was what my father would relay to me the following evening, though, that would really shock me.

He came home to find a bag full of tins of cat food and other cat things that our neighbour had left with a note explaining that it was for Trent. My dad went to our neighbour’s house to thank them for the food but to explain that Trent had died the night before.

Our neighbours were shocked to hear it because, as it turned out, Cozzi had been hit by a car that morning too.

Cozzi the cat was 19 years old, and he and Trent were fast friends. They always hung out together, whether in our yard or our neighbour’s yard, and while they weren’t exactly sitting in each others shadow, they were pretty close.

For as long as I’ve known Cozzi, he’s always slept out in the middle of the road, and he’s never been hit by a car. I’ve always thought to myself, “How can he just sleep out there like that?”

He just did. No fear, I guess.

To find out that Cozzi had been hit by a car after all this time was just unbelievable to me.

Well, at least it would have been, had Trent not died only about twelve hours prior.

My Dad told me that when he left for work that morning, he saw Cozzi sitting on the sidewalk. He thought to himself, “I wonder if you know that your mate is gone?”

Maybe he did know that his mate was gone. Maybe he didn’t want to be the last Cat standing. Maybe he thought it would be better to join him, instead.

Maybe it was just a really horrible coincidence. I don’t know.

But maybe, just maybe, there is something to the idea of an afterlife, after all.