On those days when the cosmos resolved in harmonic alignment, Dolores led residents to the sunroom, where stains of sunlight would streak onto the peach and cream lace curtains and smear the floor in velvety ribbons. I need Dolores. I don’t want to die, but I’m not sure I find any more use in living. Dolores, she’s the kind of cat written for flowery existential prose and Thoreau’s musings. I’m a cosmologist. Or I was a cosmologist. The funny thing they don’t tell you about aging is how the word “was” always hangs over you like a blaring reflective stop sign at a busy intersection. In cosmology, you spend years of your life leveraging every new technology, harnessing every iota of brain space, picking apart the theoretical, observational, metaphysical, microscopic, and philosophical. You study the origins of our universe and try with each ounce of your might to figure out why everything “was.” Then a Big Bang smacks your life with a crash, boom, clank; people stand up so you can sit on the subway, and you couldn’t do the splits if you tried–and now you’re the “was.”

For the past year, I’ve been tracking her down, noting every glimpse of bushy tail and every splash of creamy fur. When you come to a retirement community, ready to release yourself from the vicious carousel of a 9 to 5, you look out for Dolores, welcoming yourself into the freemasonry of waiting. For a cat who can predict the unpredictable, her routine is surprisingly unsurprising. Thus, I have compiled a list of the following truths; 1: Dolores likes the sunroom, and her favorite pond lies in the midst of its grassy garden view. 2: Dolores, despite existing within the universe under its known laws, defies its rules. 3: Dolores knows when people are going to die, and visits them, sharing a final moment before the residents depart. 4: Dolores has not yet visited me. I don’t know when she will.

Empirical evidence suggests that there is no way we can prove or disprove the presence of God. I figure I am pretty close in line to discovering answers though. Everyone here is. In December, Dolores clawed at the door of Mrs. Donnelly's upstairs apartment. I saw her later that day in the foyer, bearing too much weight in her furrowed brow. She had gotten all dressed up as if Hades wouldn’t snatch her up if he saw her upscale facade. Brassy buttons on her cardigan shivered in metallic anticipation. She was shaken. I wondered why her eyes reflected such panic. That night, she slipped away peacefully. Two weeks ago, I watched Dolores guide Lenny in apartment 4C down the hall and to the sunroom. He died last week, in his sleep. I wonder if Dolores knows on which day we’ll die or if she’s always known from the moment we moved in. I wonder if somewhere deep down she knows when she will die. Do her bones shake under the weight of all the lives she handles? Maybe death feels easier when you’re ready for it.

Today, I figure I’ll go for a stroll in the garden beyond the sunroom and look for Emma’s face in the sky. There’s a certain cloudy crispness in the air that blocks out the vastness of the landscape. You can tilt your chin up and all you can see is pale blue and a little wedge of sun, cut sharply from the sky with the serrated blade of fog. I’ll go and I’ll sit in the mist and inhale. 

When I still owned my home, I didn’t have a place to do that–no balcony or porch, or front yard with a spiky little picket fence. I was a city gal. So was Emma. Our apartment was so high, you could see the sky and its scrapers for blocks. It was a little overwhelming. I think it suited us though; no kids, just city and sky and physics. Each day, we annotated every astronomy and physics-related thesis we could get our hands on. Each night, we charted every curve and bend of each other.

In the garden, it smells like soil and petrichor, earthy and rich. I take a deep breath and fiddle with my wedding ring, beams of light glinting off its golden surface. I think about how such a small piece of metal, a simple element, could cause such pain. My parents, I am told, died some time ago. Were they still angry with me? Offended and disgusted with a life they would never accept? A few feet away, a bumblebee seems to hum in indifference.

Paws folded, Dolores is resting on a small stone bench next to the pond that shimmers in the sun’s symphony, sighing gently. She is staring at a lilypad in stillness–maybe it’ll die soon. Its surface is bathed in the pearly glow of dawn. Carefully, I lower my legs onto the bench beside her. The soft skin behind my knees crinkles. Splashes of orange and black cascade down her lumpy spine and tufts of ivory fur trickle from her ears. Whiskers jet out of her cheeks in milky streams. When my hand extends to pet her, she allows me the touch but does not make eye contact, remaining still. I stroke her for a few minutes as she releases a slow and gentle purr that escapes from her little body like wisps of smoke.

In college, I majored in astronomy, despite my parents’ wishes for me to adopt a more traditional life. On the first day of Intro to Astrophysics, the lecture hall was brimming with nerds, preppy trust fund kids, high school robotics club leaders, and kids who needed extra credits for graduation. I sat between a man with a navy briefcase and another who cleared his throat every time he adjusted his glasses. Our professor began with his name, the name of the course, and a proposition; “the universe is big, you are small–you can spend your whole career dissecting the intersections of the cosmos and the inner workings of everything. But, will you choose to study the universe to understand it or to understand yourself?” Maybe my answer was both. I wanted so badly to immerse myself in this new world of introspection. After class, I joined the philosophy club, headed by the same professor. That’s where I first met Emma. We were two centripetal forces, caught on the merry-go-round of college life. Two soft faces in a sea of men, we found respite in each other. Her hands were unusually rough, her body, smooth and inviting. I would cook our meals and she would feed all of me, delicately and deliberately. 

Death is the only guarantee life will give you from birth; I think Dolores knows that. Does she spend time with the residents during their final moments for comfort? Does she lead them to an afterlife? Does she pity them? Recently, we’ve gotten closer. Sometimes Dolores will nudge me and sniff my fingertips when I approach her. She never comes to me first, though. Maybe she’s worried I’ll get the wrong impression and start speed-writing a will. She doesn’t make eye contact either. 

When I die, inevitably soon, I hope there are gift bags at my funeral, little party favors with my face on them. Or a banner with “So long! Farewell!” would suffice, depending on the party planners’ tastes. It might not be a celebration of life, more so a well-rounded conclusion to this chapter I’ve had without Emma. It’s been a long few years. For now, I’ll wait for Dolores to signal that the time is right. I hope it comes shortly. I miss my wife.

It’s not particularly fun to wait in an assisted living center. There’s a certain aged charm, I suppose. The walls are washed with a warm glow, it’s cozy; it’s the type of place you’d expect to smell like mothballs and worn sofas. I chuckle at the sheer agedness of it. Maybe in my mind, I’m still young and chasing the endless work grind of an independent college stem grad. Back then, I wrote scholarly articles, published a book, and could’ve worked and worked with no remorse until the collapse of the stars. We both could’ve; we were skilled. I was skilled. “Was.” If she were here, we’d still be living in that endless-sky apartment. In her absence, I think I have come to terms with my mortality. Living on the ground again is a humbling reminder of aloneness. It’s a silent scream from the cosmos: she’s not here. I hope she would be proud of the work I finished for us. 

Dolores and I have breached the more-than-friendly-acquaintances stage in our friendship and she doesn’t mind when I catch her basking in the spots of drizzled light in the sunroom. She’s aging too. Her silky fur is beginning to thin and the skin in the corners of her eyes hangs heavy like a beagle’s. Maybe she is ready to retire. Maybe she has seen the passing of enough lives and the quietus of enough stars. I wonder which out of her nine lives she is on. Maybe it’s the first, or maybe there were eight before this one. I smile when imagining the possibilities: Dolores as a shepherd cat, Dolores the princess cat trapped atop a lighthouse, Dolores parading around a Greecian bathhouse–trying not to accidentally dip her toes in the water, Dolores sleeping within the folds of tightly rolled fabric swaths in an emporium, Dolores curled up at the foot of a little girl’s twin-sized bed.

I awake to a soft humming on my torso. It’s Dolores. Her purrs sputter on my stomach like a motorcycle being revved. Dolores has come to me, finally. I lift my chin up–it’s all so sudden, vertiginous. Silently, I nod and she leaps down onto the carpeted floor, her nails clacking on the edge of the bed frame. With no particular urgency, she glides down the hall to the sunroom, tail swaying with contemplation. The sunroom is gorgeous; I think I see why cats always tend toward the light. It’s early, the time of day when the sky is blushing blue but the outline of the moon still blends with the morning mist. The little stone bench peers into the flora-laminated pond and the breeze purrs and murmurs against the rustling grass.

I’m ready to die. I’ve been ready for some time now. The universe is big, I am small. I have spent my whole career dissecting the intersections of the cosmos and the inner workings of everything. I don’t know if I understand it all, the universe or myself, but I trust Dolores to know. Squinting in the morning light, I rest on a cushiony cream chair that collapses a little upon impact. Dolores treads in two circles on my lap, then stretches and neatly curls herself into a pill shape and exhales. It sounds like wind between reeds. 

Dolores is like the cosmos. She holds the wisdom of philosophers, astronomers, parishes, teachers, the solar system–it is all whole and ingrained. Her eyes finally meet mine, they are flaxen with pupils the size of black holes. Dolores closes her eyes; she is old. Not only in age but in the universal sense. The sunroom casts a symphony of warmth that crescendos across my eyelids as I let its heat envelop me like a lullaby, the culmination of a life long lived. Is it my breathing that slows or hers? It’s hard to tell. I close my eyes and imagine Dolores moving on to the next of her nine lives, and me settling my final, marking my place somewhere among the stars.